UNDP - World Bank Water and Sanitation Program Report - WSP

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UNDP - World Bank 

Water and Sanitation 

Program 

Report 

Contents 

Introduction 

Chapter 1 

Learning What Works 

Meeting Global Challenges 

Chapter 2 

Regional and Global Activities 

South Asia 

East Asia and the Pacific 

West and Central Africa 

East and Southern Africa 

Andean Region 

Headquarters: 

Washington, DC 

Chapter 3 

Program Financing 

Staff 

Contacts and Credits

2 

Introduction 

This report reviews the activities of the 

UNDP-World Bank Water and Sanitation 

Program for the 18-month period 

from January 1997 to June 1998. 

This year (1998) marked our twentieth 

year of activity and provided us with a 

useful vantage point to see both where 

the sector and the Program have been 

over the past two decades and where 

we are heading as we move into the 

next century. In this spirit we published 

Learning What Works, a critical and 

insightful examination of the first twenty 

years of the Program’s experience. We 

encourage you to read or request 

copies of this and other publications 

mentioned in this report through our 

website at www.wsp.org. 

Although much has changed since 

our founding as a series of discrete 

projects in 1978, our emphasis on fieldbased 

learning to support our many 

partners in helping poor people to gain 

sustained access to improved water and 

sanitation services is as strong as ever. 

The period covered in this report was 

one of relative stability and consolidation 

for the Program and much was achieved. 

A global study, based on detailed field 

work and case studies from six countries, 

was published on how to make rural 

water supply sustainable, and served 

as part of the basis for the Community 

Water Supply and Sanitation Conference 

in May 1998. 

Another feature of this period has 

been our enhanced ability to reach and 

facilitate sharing among larger and 

more diverse audiences through our 

UNDP - WORLD BANK WATER AND SANITATION PROGRAM 

continuously expanding, trilingual 

website (English, French and Spanish). 

Visitors to the website will find useful 

Program information, links to partner 

organizations, proceedings of the 

May conference, and a number of 

other publications and reports (including 

this one). 

But the challenge before us today 

remains essentially the same as twenty 

years ago: to put our vast store of 

accumulated knowledge and experience 

at the service of communities and 

governments attempting to improve 

water and sanitation services in the 

face of enormous political, economic 

and social challenges. The health, 

environmental and social costs of 

unsafe drinking water and inadequate 

sanitation will continue to plague 

efforts of developing countries to 

accelerate economic growth and 

alleviate poverty as they move into the 

next century. The Program must 

continue to pursue its mission through 

an expanding and increasingly active 

set of partnerships at the local, 

national, regional and global levels. 

I would also like to recognize and 

thank our many partners, whose 

knowledge and resources help us to 

operate effectively, and the bilateral and 

multilateral external support agencies 

that continue to provide the financial 

grants on which our work depends. 

Brian Grover, 

Program Manager

UNDP - 

World Bank 

Water and 

Sanitation 

Program 

now on line 

maintenant 

disponible 

en ligne 

Ahora, en línea 

4 

www.wsp.org 

Chapter 1 

Learning What Works 

Meeting Global Challenges 

Since 1978, the UNDP-World Bank 

Water and Sanitation Program has 

been involved in helping poor 

communities obtain sustained 

access to improved water and 

sanitation services. Despite 

considerable sector achievements 

over the last couple of decades, 

more than one billion people in 

the developing world still lack 

adequate supplies of water, and 

over two billion do not have basic 

sanitation services. 

The Program is a partnership that 

directly addresses these problems. It is 

part of a global effort to counteract the 

enormous health, environmental and 

social costs of inadequate water and 

sanitation services by improving the 

efficiency and effectiveness of the sector 

and exploring new opportunities for 

service provision and enhancement. 

While the Program’s scope and activities 

have evolved considerably over the 

years, its basic elements -- a focus on 

serving poor communities, emphasis on 

working through partnerships, and 

concentration on field-based activities -have 

remained constant. 

Over the last few years the Program 

has shifted its focus towards more 

facilitative approaches capable of 

responding to changing client 

demands. During the eighteen months 

chronicled here, the Program 

developed and consolidated this 

approach at the global level through 

greater emphasis on its learning 

agenda. This included publication of a 


six-country study analyzing the impact 

of demand-responsive approaches on 

the sustainability of rural water systems; 

the co-sponsoring of the Community 

Water Supply and Sanitation 

Conference in May 1998; and 

increased use of media such as video 

and the Internet to facilitate learning 

and sharing of Program- and sectorrelated 

activities and experiences 

among our partners and clients at all 

levels. This emphasis on maximizing 

the potential of new and existing 

means of communications to improve 

the collection and dissemination of 

information and the exchange of 

knowledge is having a dramatic impact 

on our efforts to build the capacity of 

our partners and clients. 

The opportunities provided by 

enhanced communications and 

progress in promoting more gendersensitive 

and participatory 

approaches to water supply and 

sanitation service provision are great, 

but the water and sanitation 

challenges posed by increases in 

population, poverty and inequality -particularly 

in the developing world’s 

growing urban and peri-urban areas -are 

even greater. This report describes 

activities which reflect the Program’s 

efforts to keep ahead of this 

increasing demand by creating an 

enabling environment for policy reforms, 

supporting sustainable investments, 

and making optimal use of Program 

knowledge and experience and of 

others working in the sector.

CHAPTER 1: LEARNING WHAT WORKS 

Overview of the Program 

Originally conceived as an applied 

research project aimed at supporting 

efforts in the Drinking Water Supply 

and Sanitation Decade (1981-1990), 

the Program is now in its twentieth year 

and has proven to be a unique and 

influential experiment in development 

partnerships. Together with partners in 

government, donor agencies, the 

private sector, and non-governmental 

organizations, the Program promotes 

and facilitates innovative solutions and 

participatory approaches tailored to 

local needs and conditions. 

The Program’s approach to 

sustainable sector development is 

based on principles adopted at the 

1992 International Conference on 

Water and the Environment in Dublin 

and at the 1992 International 

Conference on Water and the 

Environment and Development in Rio 

de Janeiro. More commonly known as 

the Dublin Principles, these principles 

form the basis of the demandresponsive 

approach which guides the 

Program: 

• Fresh water is a finite and 

vulnerable resource, essential to sustain 

life, development and the environment; 

• Water development and 

management should be based on a 

participatory approach, involving 

users, planners and policymakers at 

all levels; 

• Women play a central part in the 

provision, management and 

safeguarding of water; and 

• Water has an economic value in all 

its competing uses and should be 

recognized as an economic good. 

Program Objectives 

The Program collaborates with partners 

to translate these principles into 

actions. Capacity building is central to 

Program work. Working with country 

and external support agency partners, 

the Program involves sector actors and 

stakeholders in sector development so 

that each activity not only promotes 

sector reform but also offers an 

opportunity to develop skills to support 

future reforms. Three objectives provide 

the framework for working with partners. 

Strengthen 

Sector 

Policies 

Learn and 

Communicate Lessons 

Capacity 

Building 

Support 

Sustainable 

Investments 

Strengthening Sector Policies 

The Program encourages policy reform 

as part of its efforts to help partners 

create an enabling environment for 

large investments in peri-urban and 

rural areas. The Program helps 

national organizations identify and 

implement the internal reforms that are 

needed to support these policies, 

strategies and programs. For example, 

the role of government often needs to 

be changed from the traditional 

paternalistic one of provider to that of 

a facilitator of services, through the 

5

establishment of strong institutional 

rules, regulations, and processes that 

encourage local decision-making. 

The Program helps ensure that these 

elements are embedded in national 

policies and strategies and are 

reflected in the structure and operations 

of national sector agencies. 

Supporting Sustainable 

Investments 

Sustainable services are the goal of 

sector development. It has become 

increasingly evident that water and 

sanitation projects that respond to 

community-demand are more likely to 

be used and sustained by their 

beneficiaries. Projects are more likely 

to be sustainable when communities 

make decisions about the services that 

they want, are willing to pay for, and 

are able to maintain locally with 

minimal external support. 

The Program supports sustainable 

investments by building national 

capacity and encouraging adoption of 

demand-responsive approaches which 

treat water as both an economic and a 

social good, and involve stakeholders 

in the selection, planning and 

operation of water and sanitation 

services. The Program helps test, 

monitor and adapt various 

institutional, technological and service 

delivery options to promote the 

sustainability of large-scale projects. 

These efforts include pilot projects, 

implementation assistance, strategic 

supervision, willingness-to-pay studies, 

guidance and technical support in 

project design, and monitoring and 

feedback mechanisms that generate 

the information needed to make 

changes in project rules as implementation 

progresses. 

Through its support for investment 

projects, the Program works with 

community organizations, nongovernmental 

organizations, the private 

sector, local governments, and local 

offices of federal agencies. It 

encourages the participation of these 

groups and seeks to develop capacity 

and promote more informed decisionmaking 

regarding project design and 

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implementation. By working at many 

levels, the Program helps foster change 

and stimulates progress in the sector. 

Learning and 

Communicating Lessons 

The Program identifies and analyzes 

key sector problems, identifies 

solutions, documents and shares 

lessons from the field, and disseminates 

information at the national, regional 

and global levels. Learning across 

projects is possible when it is built into 

each project and lessons from earlier 

stages are used to adapt and improve 

projects. This approach is aimed at 

giving the Program a more rigorous 

means of learning and documenting 

what works, and placing it in a 

position to disseminate useful lessons. 

As the adoption of a demandresponsive 

approach has encouraged 

more decentralized and tailored 

approaches to water and sanitation, 

the Program has concentrated 

increasingly on fostering communication 

and sharing ideas and 

experience among its partners and 

agencies working in different parts of 

the world. 

To facilitate communications, each 

regional office has hired a communications 

officer and an informal 

network has developed among the 

regional and headquarters 

communications teams. A Program 

communications strategy has been 

developed that provides a framework 

to link the Program’s networking, 

publishing and information activities. 

The strategy layers and links Program 

information so that the information is 

responsive to audience needs. The 

Program website provides global 

access to information about Program 

activities and projects in all regions, 

connects visitors to other development 

organizations working in the water 

and sanitation sector, and promotes 

the exchange of information among 

organizations and agencies working 

at all levels. Through the website, 

other more targeted dissemination 

efforts, and organization of 

conferences such as the Community 



Conference, the Program continues to 

expand its role as a focal point for 

sharing lessons among partners and 

networking among practitioners, 

decisionmakers and donors. 

Demand Responsive Approach 

In the past, too many projects have 

been developed without considering 

community demand for services and 

with limited consideration of economic 

efficiency or sustainability. 

The Program has invested 

considerable effort in developing the 

ground rules sector planners need to 

implement an effective demandresponsive 

approach. Four general 

rules have been identified. First, not 

every community in a project area 

should be regarded as eligible for 

services; to become eligible it has to 

seek improvement. Second, decisions 

about installations and service levels 

should be made by communities on the 

basis of options submitted and their 

cost implications. Third, cost-sharing 

arrangements should be spelled out. 

And fourth, emphasis must be placed 

on sustainability – on determining who 

would own installations, manage them, 

and pay for their upkeep in the future. 

In 1997, the Program sponsored a 

six-country global study to clarify 

demand-responsiveness and to measure 

and quantify the impact of demandresponsiveness 

on the sustainability of 

rural water systems. The study found 

that using a demand-responsive 

approach at the community level 

significantly increased the likelihood 

of water system sustainability. 

(See box page 39) 

A demand-responsive approach 

involves more than giving communities 

choice about service levels. It requires 

changing the way projects are 

implemented so that they shift to 

community management and financing 

of implementation. This implies new 

roles for supply agencies and the need 

for a concerted effort to overcome 

resistance to change. Overcoming such 

resistance requires an enabling policy 

environment, the establishment of

CHAPTER 1: LEARNING WHAT WORKS 

greater trust between governments and 

communities, provision of support and 

training, and steps to help the private 

sector better provide goods and 

services and simplify contracting 

procedures. In short, moving to a 

demand-responsive approach demands 

greater attention to the roles and 

incentives of each stakeholder group. 

Key Program Themes 

The Program activities highlighted in 

this report fall under one of the 

following themes: rural water supply 

and sanitation, urban environmental 

sanitation (and increasingly, water 

supply), and participation and gender. 

Rural Water Supply and Sanitation 

Program teams continue to learn about 

what works in rural areas and to reach 

out to partners in the sector to help 

them apply this knowledge. 

Experiences applying a demandresponsive 

approach to rural water 

supply and sanitation have been 

distilled and were shared at the 

Community Water Supply and 

Sanitation Conference in Washington 

in May 1998. Sponsored by the 

Program and the World Bank, the 

conference focused on the demandresponsive 

approach and the 

implications for management and 

sustainability of services. A series of 

presentations, 36 case studies, and the 

Program-sponsored global study on the 

relationship between demand 

responsiveness and sustainability 

provided a framework for 

understanding the demand-responsive 

approach. (See box page 39) 

Urban Environmental Sanitation 

The world’s population increasingly 

lives in cities, a trend which is 

increasing the urgency of providing 

reliable and environmentally sound 

water supply and sanitation services. 

The strategic sanitation approach 

developed by the Program draws upon 

lessons from experience, World Bank 

urban development work, and from 

others working in the water and 

sanitation sector worldwide. 

The approach recognizes that urban 

poverty has no easy solutions and that 

many urban institutions and local 

governments are still attempting to 

develop efficient management structures 

for water and sanitation services. The 

goal of the strategic sanitation 

approach is to foster investment and 

operational efficiency, and to develop 

sustainable services even where urban 

poverty is growing. Through this 

approach, municipalities and 

communities base their plans and 

actions on: 

• Choices on technologies and service 

levels; 

• Step-by-step actions which unbundle 

services both vertically and 

horizontally; 

• Economic replicability; and 

• Responsive institutional 

arrangements. 

The Program advocates a strategic 

sanitation approach designed to be 

flexible enough to adjust to different 

regions and contexts and to incorporate 

learning and application of lessons from 

new experiences. This approach has 

already been successfully applied to 

sanitation planning in many countries 

worldwide, with documented results. 

Participation and Gender 

Stakeholder participation in designing, 

implementing, and managing water 

and sanitation projects is key to 

sustaining coverage for both urban and 

rural communities. The Program has 

been active in promoting participation 

of community members in sector 

development activities at the policy, 

organizational and project levels. 

However, women are still not fully 

participating in policymaking, 

economic and sector analysis, and 

management. They are often impeded 

by cultural and legal constraints and 

by their relative lack of time and 

mobility due to their multiple roles 

and workloads. 

Community Water Supply and Sanitation Conference 

Demand-responsiveness as the starting point for community water 

and sanitation services was the theme of an international conference 

held in Washington in May 1998. More than 350 people attended, 

representing over 80 countries and a wide range of stakeholders, 

nationalities, institutions, donors and professions. 

The purpose of the conference was to allow participants to share 

their experiences with implementing demand-responsive approaches, 

identify the difficulties encountered, and map out the road ahead. 

The themes of the conference were organized around key messages. 

These included the need for flexibility in project design, incentives for 

stakeholders, appropriate community financing mechanisms, 

information-sharing, means of identifying community demand, 

selection of technical options based on demand, eligibility of communities 

for services, and the many institutional implications of these 

requirements. Among the concerns expressed by participants were 

the need to avoid marginalizing the very poor by basing service 

access on demand; the slow pace of service delivery based on 

demand; the incentives needed to persuade government institutions 

to abandon supply-led approaches; the difficulty of overcoming 

distrust for government felt by communities. 

In evaluating the conference, many participants admitted that it 

had enabled them to appreciate for the first time the full dimensions 

of demand-responsive approaches, and the importance of 

community participation for service sustainability. Many resolved to 

rethink or re-design policies, and pass on what they had learned to 

colleagues and clients. 

7

Bilateral partners include: 

• Australian Agency for 

International Development; 

• Belgium Agency for 

Development Cooperation; 

• Canadian International 

Development Agency; 

• Danish Agency for 

International Development; 

• Ministry of Foreign Affairs- 

Italy; 

• Ministry of Finance- Japan; 


Luxembourg; 

• Directorate General for 

International Cooperation- 

Netherlands; 


Norway; 

• Swedish International 

Development Cooperation 

Agency; 

• Swiss Agency for 

Development and Cooperation; 

• Department for International 

Development- United Kingdom. 

8 

The Program works in collaboration 

with a wide range of partners to 

develop programs aimed at fostering 

greater participation by all community 

members. One such program, the 

Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation 

Transformation (PHAST) method, has 

been pilot-tested in East Africa and 

was developed in coordination with 

national governments, nongovernmental 

organizations, UNICEF, WHO 

and bilateral donors. The Program has 

documented the experiences and 

lessons of PHAST so that it can be 

adapted and replicated elsewhere. 

Building on previous Program 

experience, work has begun on the first 

phase of a five-year Participatory 

Learning and Action Initiative to 

improve the capacity of sector agencies 

to respond to user demands for water 

supply and sanitation services using 

gender-sensitive participatory 

approaches. The initiative was 

formulated at a workshop held in May 

1997 in the Netherlands and at two 

subsequent workshops. It will consist of 

assessments of projects in 14 countries, 

examining the links between the use of 

demand-responsive, gender- and 

poverty-sensitive approaches in the 

design and implementation of water 

and sanitation services in rural and 

peri-urban communities, and overall 

impact and sustainability. The results of 

these assessments will serve as the 

basis for a program of action-oriented 

activities in the second phase. 

Program Organization 

The global program is organized into 

the following five regional teams in 

Africa, Asia and Latin America, with 

resources concentrated in selected 

focus countries. 

• East and Southern Africa: 

Nairobi, Kenya 

• West and Central Africa: 

Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire 

• East Asia and the Pacific: 

Jakarta, Indonesia 

• South Asia: 

New Delhi, India 

• Andean Region: 

La Paz, Bolivia 


The regional teams are supported by 

headquarters technical and administrative 

staff located in Washington, DC. 

Each regional team is made up of staff 

with diverse skills, including expertise in 

rural water supply and sanitation, urban 

environmental sanitation, gender and 

participation, community development, 

hygiene education and communications. 

A staff list is provided at the end of 

this report. 

Program regional staff work closely 

with developing country partners while 

the headquarters team helps provide a 

global perspective, sharing lessons from 

all the regions. Ongoing communications 

between regional teams provides 

an opportunity for staff to learn from one 

another’s experiences. This learning is 

facilitated by electronic communications, 

including the Program website. Other 

opportunities to learn and adapt lessons 

include workshops, conferences, study 

tours and publications. 

Funding 

Financing comes from 12 bilateral 

donor agencies, the United Nations 

Development Program, the World Bank 

and from the countries themselves. 

Each donor supports initiatives at the 

national, regional and global levels. 

Collaboration and Partnerships 

The Program builds and maintains 

strategic partnerships at the national, 

regional and global levels. These 

links help develop consensus on 

sector development and foster more 

coordinated water and sanitation 

efforts. The Program actively 

participates in the Global Water 

Partnership and the Water Supply 

and Sanitation Collaborative Council, 

and maintains working relationships 

with many international organizations 

and agencies. 

The Program Advisory Committee 

includes developing country partners, 

Program donors, and other strategic 

partners including UNICEF and the 

World Health Organization. The 

committee meets annually and guides 

policies and the planning and 

implementation of activities.

Regional Reports 

South Asia 




Andean Region

N 

W E 

S 

10 

ECUADOR 

PERU 

LA PAZ 

BOLIVIA 

SENEGAL 

GUINEA 

ABIDJAN 

MALI 

COTE D'IVOIRE 

GHANA 

BENIN 

BURKINA 

FASO 

RWANDA 

ZAMBIA 

ETHIOPIA 

UGANDA 

MALAWI 

ZIMBABWE 

ERITREA 

MOZAMBIQUE 

NAIROBI 

TANZANIA 

PAKISTAN 

KENYA 


DELHI 

INDIA 

SRI LANKA 

MONGOLIA 

CHINA 

NEPAL 

BANGLADESH 

LAO PDR 

CAMBODIA 

I N D O N E S I A 

VIETNAM 

JAKARTA 

P H I L I P P I N E S

CHAPTER 2: REGIONAL AND GLOBAL ACTIVITIES 

South Asia 




Andean Region 

Regional office 

Chapter 2 

Regional and Global Activities 

The Program has nearly 100 staff 

working in twenty-nine countries. 

The organizational structure of the 

Program encourages flexibility and 

responsiveness to the needs of its 

clients as well as to emerging issues 

in the water and sanitation sector. 

Decision-making and the allocation of 

financial and human resources are 

handled by experienced personnel 

at the appropriate level: national, 

regional, or global. 

The Program’s structure and 

multidisciplinary staff allow it to function 

in a number of ways. The decentralized 

structure encourages unique and 

independent activities at all levels. 

The global focus helps foster strong 

thematic and inter-regional links that 

allow for information exchange and 

create opportunities to learn and adapt 

lessons among countries, within regions, 

and around the world. 

The Program participates at the 

global level through strategic 

partnerships such as the Global Water 

Partnership and the Water Supply and 

Sanitation Collaborative Council. 

Program staff, especially those based 

at headquarters, provide a global 

perspective, compiling and analyzing 

lessons from the Program’s experiences 

worldwide as well as from the 

experiences of others in the water and 

sanitation sector. In this way the 

Program is able to take advantage of 

its close association with field--based 

projects as well as benefit from 

experiences all over the world. 

The Program’s field presence 

enables staff to build strong relationships 

with developing country partners and 

to work closely with them. Field staff 

share knowledge of problems common 

to other countries in a region and are 

able to apply lessons that they have 

learned in one area to help find 

solutions in others. Field--based staff 

also contribute to Program learning 

at the global level. 

11

Overview 

The Regional Water and 

Sanitation Group for South Asia is 

active in five countries that have 

a combined population of 1.3 

billion people (representing one 

fifth of the world's population 

and about half of the world's 

poor) and a World Bank Water 

and Sanitation portfolio exceeding 

US $3 billion. 

Although the region is faced 

with severe challenges due to its 

massive population, high poverty 

rate and other factors, South Asia 

features some of the best 

practices in the water supply and 

sanitation sector as well. At one 

extreme are inefficient sector 

bureaucracies, deteriorating 

public services, inefficient public 

investments, worsening water 

quality and unacceptable sanitary 

conditions. At the other extreme 

are numerous small but effective 

local, innovative, people-centered 

initiatives. Still, despite significant 

increases in public investment in 

the water and sanitation sector in 

recent years, much needs to be 

done to further improve overall 

coverage and quality of services 

in many parts of the region. 

12 

REGIONAL OFFICE: 

NEW DELHI, INDIA 

FOCUS COUNTRIES: 

BANGLADESH* 

INDIA 

NEPAL 

PAKISTAN* 

SRI LANKA 

*In-country Program field office 

South Asia 

Diversion of capital investments 

to cover the often redundant costs 

incurred by centralized sector 

organizations undermines the 

impact of increased investments in 

the sector. In addition, water 

continues to be treated primarily 

as a social and political good, 

leading to serious inefficiencies in 

the allocation of resources and 

investments and undermining the 

long-term sustainability of services. 

National policies in areas such as 

subsidized power and water 

rights provide incentives for users 

to exploit and misuse water rather 

than protect and conserve it. 

It is against this background 

that the Program's South Asia 

office continues to promote policy 

reforms and pilot projects that 

demonstrate how the sustainable 

provision of water and sanitation 

services in both rural and urban 

areas can be planned and 

managed. Working with a number 

of key partners at national, state 

and local levels, the Program is 

developing and promoting new 

approaches, supporting policies 

and encouraging investments 

throughout the region. Through 

extensive documentation and 

dissemination of lessons learned 

in various projects, the Program 

seeks to bridge the knowledge 

and action gap among its partners 

and to support communities 

(particularly women) and other 


key decision-makers in the 

formulation of appropriate, 

informed decisions. The Program 

has also taken steps to decentralize 

and introduce more participatory 

decision-making into its own 

management structure, in keeping 

with the demand-responsive 

approach it encourages among its 

partners and clients throughout 

the region. 


The Program’s South Asia team 

promotes demand-based, sustainable 

water supply and sanitation services for 

the poor, with particular strategic focus 

on urban environmental sanitation (UES). 

The Program has participated in the 

development of a number of urban 

investment projects in the region, and its 

learning agenda focuses on identifying 

and disseminating knowledge about 

ways to improve delivery of urban 

services for the poor. In collaboration 

with the Swiss Agency for Development 

and Cooperation in Bangladesh, the 

Program is supporting a pilot project to 

test alternative institutional arrangements 

and develop guidelines for implementing 

demand-driven projects through publicprivate 

partnerships in the urban 

environmental sanitation sector. In 

Pakistan, the Program is supporting the 

development of a policy framework 

based on practical experience gained 

through local initiatives. And in India, 

the Program is assisting the Ahmedabad 

Municipal Corporation in implementing


an innovative program to provide basic 

sanitation services for the city's slums, 

and in preparing strategic sanitation 

plans for small- and medium-sized towns. 

More recent emphasis has been 

placed on building capacity in municipalities 

to prepare strategic sanitation 

plans. Urban-targeted activities in 

water, sanitation, solid waste management 

and drainage are expected to 

expand even further in response to the 

challenges posed by South Asia's 

unbridled urban growth. 


The Program supports reforms in the 

rural water supply and sanitation 

sector in each of its focus countries. 

This support includes facilitating 

dialogue between governments and 

encouraging adoption and application 

of demand-based approaches. The 

South Asia Group is involved in a 

number of large-scale rural water supply 

and sanitation projects funded by the 

World Bank and bilateral donors in 

the region. 

In Pakistan, the Group has supported 

major IDA-assisted projects in Azad, 

Jammu, Kashmir, Balochistan and Sindh, 

and the multi-donor Social Action 

Program Project. Putting demandresponsive 

principles into practice in a 

historically supply-driven environment 

has often implied significant changes 

to the way things operate. In Sindh, 

for example, the Program has 

brokered a partnership between formal 

(Public Health Engineering Department, 

PHED) and non-formal (Sindh Graduates 

Association, SGA, and the Orangi Pilot 

Project-Research and Training Institute, 

OPP-RTI) sector institutions to develop 

and test demand-responsive approaches. 

These approaches are being applied in 

a number of pilot villages across the 

province, in which communities are 

mobilized by the SGA and assisted in 

the identification, planning, implementation, 

management and funding of 

selected projects. The involvement of 

communities has lowered the costs of 

these projects and has led to the use of 

more appropriate technology and 

service levels. Lessons learned from 

these pilots will inform a whole new 

generation of projects, and will 

demonstrate how the country's 

"Uniform RWSS Policy", which 

stipulates the use of community-based 

approaches, can best be put into 

practice. The Program will be documenting 

the pilots and will prepare field 

notes and case studies for dissemination. 

In Bangladesh, the Program is 

working in collaboration with the 

Swiss Agency for Development and 

Cooperation to develop and 

Case Study: Uttar Pradesh, India 

implement a new generation of rural 

projects to build capacity in user 

communities, test new roles for public 

sector agencies and employ strategic 

monitoring as a tool for adaptive 

learning in low water table areas. In 

India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, the 

Program has been actively involved in 

the preparation and supervision of a 

variety of demand-based projects, 

drawing on its vast resources and 

experience to supervise, adapt and 

refine these projects. 

The policy environment for rural water and sanitation services in India - 

where according to the Constitution, rural water supply and sanitation 

are the responsibility of the state government -- does not strongly 

support a demand-responsive approach, but the government of Uttar 

Pradesh has taken steps in this direction by agreeing to undertake 

the pilot Program-assisted Rural Water Supply and Environmental 

Sanitation Project. The ‘Swajal project’, conceived in September 1994, 

seeks to implement reform through a newly created institutional 

structure, in the form of a partnership among the Project Management 

Unit (an autonomous government agency), non-governmental 

organizations, and village water and sanitation committees. Progress 

has been encouraging so far, and it appears that although most of 

India's water and sanitation delivery services are currently subsidized, 

cost recovery from relatively poor communities will not be a problem 

as the demand for sustainable water and sanitation systems is so 

great. Another encouraging sign is that under the project's new 

delivery system, the government has so far been willing to play a 

facilitating and partnership role rather than an implementing one. 

The project covers the two most water-scarce regions in the state, 

and aims to bring water supply, sanitation (latrines and drains), 

environmental protection works, hygiene and sanitation awareness, 

and women's development initiatives to 1,000 villages over six years, in 

four phases. Although implementation of the project in the first group of 

villages has yet to be completed, all indications are that the 

demand-responsive approach will lead to a sustainable outcome. 

The initial challenge in implementing such a project was overcoming the 

resistance and skepticism of the government and other players in the 

sector, particularly in an environment of public subsidies and 

centralized decision-making. There was no such problem with nongovernmental 

organizations and local communities, however, and 

once local communities expressed enthusiasm for the demand-driven 

approach, government cynicism diminished. 

Looking ahead, the replicability of the Swajal project should be 

tested by trying a demand-driven approach in other parts of Uttar 

Pradesh and the county, with local variations and site-specific differences 

in design but all following the same basic approach. Given the 

soundness of the project design, if the same level of effort is made, there 

is no reason the Swajal approach should not be replicable elsewhere. 

13


and Reforms 

The Program assists governments and 

external support agencies in improving 

sector policies and strategies, and 

promotes partnership and collaboration 

with other agencies and organizations 

working in the region. In Bangladesh, 

we are assisting the government in the 

development of an effective water and 

sanitation sector policy with assistance 

from the Danish Agency for International 

Development, and contributing to 

the design of a new generation of rural 

water supply and sanitation projects in 

collaboration with the World Bank and 

the Swiss Agency for Development and 

Cooperation. In India, the Program has 

formed a strategic alliance with the 

Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water 

Mission to accelerate the policy reforms 

already underway to achieve sustainability 

in India's rural water supply and 

sanitation sector. 

In Bangladesh, the Program is 

supporting an effort to address the 

country-wide arsenic poisoning of 

drinking water. Bilateral organizations 

had been very active in the sector but 

were recently starting to pull out 

because they felt that their efforts to 

achieve sustainability were being 

thwarted by a lack of interest in 

institutional reform. The Program has 

managed to rally the bilaterals around a 

common approach for the new arsenic 

mitigation project, and has reached 

agreement with the government on the 

introduction of new mechanisms 

focusing on cost recovery, decentralized 

decision-making and partnership with 

non-governmental organizations. This 

initiative will not only affect the lives of 

some 40 million people, but will be the 

engine to transform the sector in many 

ways in the future. 

In Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, 

Nepal and Sri Lanka, the Program 

actively supports consultation among all 

stakeholder groups to promote the 

development of appropriate and 

effective sector policies and strategies. 

Recognizing that the understanding of 

certain key principles requires the 

sharing of knowledge and experience 

14 

across borders as well, the Program 

also sponsors broader regional 

consultations to bring together sector 

professionals working in different 

countries. In January 1998, for 

example, in collaboration with the 

Program's East Asia and Pacific office 

and the World Health Organization, 

the Program sponsored the Asian 

Regional Consultation in Chiang Mai, 

Thailand to share experiences from 

across the region and improve understanding 

of different ways sustainability 

can be achieved. 

Fostering new operational partnerships 

and collaborative mechanisms is 

another important part of the Program's 

agenda. In India, Bangladesh and 

Pakistan, the Program promotes 

improved sector coordination through 

collaboration with donors, governments 

and non-governmental organizations. 

In India, the South Asia team hosts an 

Urban Think Tank to assist municipal 

governments and state and national 

agencies in redefining their roles, and 

in developing and testing new financial, 

institutional and implementation 

arrangements. 


Investments 

The Program supports sustainable 

investments by helping its partners to 

incorporate capacity building and 

learning into their investment projects. 

Encouraging greater private sector 

participation is a priority as well. 

Efforts in this area reflect the pervasive, 

multi-dimensional and cross-cutting 

nature of poverty, which affects rural, 

urban and peri-urban areas in different 

ways, each requiring situation-specific 

solutions which engage the private 

sector differently. This new focus seeks 

to exploit the unique role and 

comparative advantage of the Program 

as a facilitator in the development of 

partnerships aimed at refining and 

maximizing the impact of water supply 

and sanitation programs. 

Current projects in India focus on 

developing new public-private 

partnerships, identifying promising local 

initiatives and studying user-managed 


regional schemes to determine the most 

effective ways to incorporate greater 

private sector participation. Bangladesh 

has a variety of private initiatives which 

are being studied to provide models for 

learning, among them the Privatization 

of Revenue Collection in Dhaka WASA 

and the WATSAN Partnership in Low 

Water Table Areas. 

Due to the growing importance of 

private sector participation in the 

provision of sustainable water and 

sanitation services in both urban and 

rural areas, the Program's initiatives will 

continue to grow in both scope and 

quality. The South Asia team also seeks 

to contribute significantly to the body of 

work on this theme in the Program's 

global learning agenda. 

Gender and Participation 

The Program helps develop and 

promote gender-sensitive participatory 

approaches in its operations throughout 

South Asia. In Pakistan, introduction of 

innovative process monitoring tools for 

the Community Infrastructure Project 

(CIP) has resulted in improved methods 

and processes for working with 

communities implementing demandresponsive 

approaches to water supply 

and sanitation services. Specific 

strategies for greater involvement of 

women are being implemented, and 

gender and participation issues are 

also being addressed and mainstreamed 

into the Program’s learning initiatives in 

RWSS and UES. 

In 1997, the South Asia team took 

the lead in co-ordinating a global 

Participatory Learning and Action 

(PLA) Initiative for the Program. The 

PLA gathers empirical evidence to 

examine the links between demand 

responsiveness, participation and 

gender, and the impact and 

sustainability of large-scale water 

supply and sanitation investments. The 

methodology for carrying out a series 

of learning assessments in partnership 

with various stakeholders has been 

developed and tested, and seven 

assessments have begun not only in 

South Asia but in two of the Program’s 

other regions.


The challenge ahead is to capture 

experiences from diverse economic, 

social and cultural settings and varying 

governance and institutional arrangements 

and attempt a meaningful globallevel 

synthesis to guide future policy. 

The emerging findings from the pilot 

assessment in Kerala, India indicates a 

strong correlation between sustainability 

and the use of demand-responsive, 

gender-sensitive, participatory 

approaches: communities have been 

shown to enjoy benefits commensurate 

with the level of their own contribution 

to water supply and sanitation projects, 

and lower sustainability appears to be 

more of an institutional and managerial 

problem than a technical one. The PLA 

is not meant to be a mere study but 

rather a basis for concrete actions 

based on lessons learned. In Sri Lanka, 

for example, the assessment has been 

used in the design of follow-on activities 

for the Community Water Supply and 

Sanitation Project (CWSSP). It is 

expected that the initiative will result in 

the formulation of specific guidelines 

for participatory social assessments in 

the sector which will eventually be 

adapted to other sectors as well. 

Learning and Communications 

Communicating learning from 

implementation experiences on a 

range of themes has long been a 

priority of the Program's South Asia 

team, which continuously analyzes, 

synthesizes and applies learning from 

projects both inside and outside the 

region. The Program has contributed 

to the preparation of case studies 

from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India, 

Bangladesh and Nepal for presentation 

in global forums and publications. In 

addition to its co-hosting of the Asian 

Regional Consultation, the Program 

continues to refine and operationalize 

key lessons and apply them in new local 

settings and investment projects. The 

Program actively seeks opportunities to 

transfer knowledge and experiences 

within the region and to foster sharing of 

knowledge and experiences across 

regions through workshops, conferences 

and publications. 

15

The South Asia team's learning 

agenda focuses on ways to improve 

the delivery of services to the urban 

and rural poor and on improving the 

design and sustainability of largescale 

rural water supply and 

sanitation projects. Also important are 

the testing and promotion of new 

tools for learning -- such as 

participatory assessments and 

strategic process monitoring -- and 

mainstreaming gender by linking it to 

demand for services. 

The South Asia regional communications 

strategy is designed to reflect and 

adapt to the needs of its clients. The 

South Asia team publishes a widely read 

Project Fact Sheet series which showcases 

important lessons from around the region. 

Selected Activities of South Asia 

Regional 

• Comparative Analysis Of Three Largescale 

Urban Sanitation Initiatives 

• Rural Water Supply and Sanitation: 

Case Studies, Synthesis and Theme Papers 

• Second Regional Workshop: Planning 

Large-Scale Rural Water Supply and 

Sanitation Projects 

• Strategic Sanitation Approach: Case 

Studies 

• Urban Environmental Sanitation: 

Financing, Institutions and Technology 

• Participation, Gender and Demand: 

Developing the Global Participatory 

Learning Action Initiative 

Bangladesh 

• Improving Design and Implementation of 

Large Investment Projects 

• Alternative Service Delivery, Technical 

and Social Assessment: Community Based 

Water Supply and Sanitation Project 

• Preparation of Rural Water Supply and 

Sanitation Sector Review 

• Improving Rural Water Supply and 

Sanitation : Comparative Study, Identifying 

Innovative Approaches 

• Workshop on Promotion of Affordable 

Technologies 

• Urban Environmental Sanitation: Case 

Studies 

• Manual, Workshop, Technical Support to 

International Training Network/Bangladesh 

University of Engineering and Technology 

16 

A report was also published in 

collaboration with the Program's East 

Asia and Pacific office, documenting 

implementation experiences drawn from 

large-scale rural water supply and 

sanitation projects and investments 

throughout Asia. 

Challenges Ahead 

Program activities are evolving to meet 

the urgent needs posed by region’s 

rapidly expanding population. To better 

meet these needs, a regional 

management team has been established 

with members from individual country 

teams as well as thematic team coordinators. 

This new structure will allow 

a more decentralized and participatory 

decision-making process for operations, 

India 

• Analysis of Participation in Rural Water 

Supply and Sanitation Projects: Case 

Studies 

• Bombay Peri-urban Sewage Disposal 

Project 

• Development and Introduction of Strategic 

Monitoring System Development and Support 

of International Training Network 

• Development of State-Level Action Plan 

• National Conference on Rural Water 

Supply and Environmental Sanitation Policy 

• Rural Water Supply Studies 

• Sector Strategy Study for the Second 

Hyderabad Water Supply and Sanitation 

Project 

• Strategic Monitoring of Rural Water 

Supply and Sanitation Projects in Karnataka 

and Uttar Pradesh 

• Strategic Sanitation Approach: Case 

Studies, Action Plans, Workshops 

• Structured Learning in Karnataka: Case 

Studies 

• Ahmedabad Parivartan: Technical Support 

to Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation 

• Think-Tank Forum 

• West Bengal Rural Water Supply and 

Sanitation Demonstration Project 

• Willingness to Pay Study 

Pakistan 

• Community Infrastructure Project: 

Process Monitoring 

• Northern Areas: Formal-Non-Formal 


and parallels the principles it promotes 

among its partners and clients. This 

initiative will help the South Asia team 

develop a greater balance in the 

structure, composition and skill mix of its 

own staff. 

The South Asia team has become a 

testing ground for global Program 

initiatives. The challenge ahead will be 

to sustain this profile by contributing 

even more substantially to the 

Program’s global learning portfolio. In 

the area of urban environmental 

sanitation in particular, the South Asia 

team must continue to identify and meet 

challenges by forming vital new 

partnerships with municipalities, NGOs 

and other development organizations. 

Sector Partnership 

• Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Pilot 

Projects in Sindh 

• Punjab: Formal- Non-Formal Sector 

Partnership 

• Social Action Program Project: Project 

Support 

• Rural Water Supply and Sanitation: 

Project Management 

• Structured Learning in Azad Jammu and 

Kashmir and Sindh: Case Studies 

• Urban Environmental Sanitation: 

Facilitating Policy Dialogue, Capacity 

Building and Technical Assistance 

Nepal 

• Support to Rural Water Supply and 

Sanitation Fund Board 

• Strategic Sanitation Planning: 

Workshop 

• Community Based Rural Water Supply 

and Sanitation Project 

Sri Lanka 

• Sector Advisory Support 

• Documentation and Dissemination of 

Sector Best Practice Examples for the Rural 

and Low-income Urban Communities 

• Strategic Supervision of the Community 

Water Supply and Sanitation Project: 

Special Studies on Local Level 

Management Experiences, Small Towns 

O&M and Management, Assessment of 

Private Sector Participation


Overview 

The Program’s East Asia-Pacific 

office is active in a diverse group 

of countries ranging from 

relatively small, agriculture-based 

economies (Cambodia, Lao PDR, 

and Mongolia) to large nations 

(China and Indonesia) that are 

rapidly transforming from rural, 

agricultural societies to urbanized, 

industry-based economies. 

Although the region has developed 

rapidly over the past decade, it 

faces serious human and environmental 

problems related to 

inadequate water and sanitation 

services for the urban poor. 

Millions of people in cities in 

China, Indonesia, the Philippines 

and Vietnam do not have access 

to adequate water and sanitation, 

a problem exacerbated by 

massive urbanization and by the 

region’s ongoing financial crisis, 

both of which have compounded 

the effects of poverty throughout 

the region. 

Despite rapid urbanization, 

most people in the region still live 

in rural communities without 

access to safe drinking water and 

basic sanitation services. Rural 

water supply and sanitation 


JAKARTA, INDONESIA 


CAMBODIA 

CHINA* 

INDONESIA 

LAO PDR* 

MONGOLIA 

PHILIPPINES* 

VIETNAM* 



continues to be a major priority, 

and the Program is working with 

its partners and clients throughout 

the region to encourage and 

support demand-based approaches 

to the extension of water supply 

and sanitation coverage. 

This trend towards greater 

decentralization can be found in 

other countries in the region as 

well but even where decisionmaking 

remains more centralized, 

project implementation is 

increasingly being executed at the 

community level and news of 

successful programs is spreading 

quickly. In China, where over 900 

million people (84% of the 

population) live in rural areas, the 

Program, through the International 

Development Agency, has 

supported three, communityimplemented 

water supply and 

sanitation projects which have had 

a vast multiplier effect. Of the 

project’s beneficiaries, only 20 

percent are from the project area; 

the other 80 percent are in nonproject 

areas that have been 

affected by news of the project. 

This demonstrates the 

enormous impact that experiences 

and lessons learned in one project 

can have on the replication and 

development of similar projects in 

other parts of the region. A 

number of case studies sharing 

key learning experiences have 

been produced, and national and 

regional-level conferences and 

workshops organized to promote 

sharing of knowledge and 

experience across the region. In 

January 1997 the Program hosted 

a conference in Dalat, Vietnam, 

where regional sector professionals 

and representatives from international 

development organizations 

met to discuss and debate best 

practices for implementation of the 

demand-responsive approach to 

water supply and sanitation service 

in the region. 

Although the Program’s 

activities have been complicated 

by Asia’s financial crisis, the crisis 

has also provided new opportunities. 

For years, the Program 

has promoted decentralization 

and the development of more 

community-based approaches to 


service delivery. This places us in 

an excellent position to respond 

to the devolution of project 

responsibility from national to 

regional local governments that is 

taking place in the wake of the 

Asian financial crisis. But although 

this trend provides new opportunities 

for small-scale enterprise 

and greater involvement by the 

informal sector, it creates great 

challenges as well. With 

decentralization and sudden 

cutbacks in support from national 

governments, capacity building 

and institutional strengthening at 

17

the local level are now more 

important than ever. To meet this 

challenge, the Program must 

continue to test different 

institutional models and different 

combinations of public and private 

involvement to ensure continued 

progress in the water supply and 



Urban environmental sanitation 

continues to be a priority and the 

Program has taken a number of steps 

toward developing regional and country 

strategies for managing excreta and 

solid wastes in urban areas. In Vietnam, 

the strategic sanitation approach 

introduced at the National Conference 

on Strategic Sanitation in Nha Trang in 

October 1996 is being used in an 

urban sanitation project, developed in 

collaboration with the World Bank, for 

the cities of Danang, Haiphong, and 

Halong. Support is being given to a 

capacity-building program, financed 

by the Swiss Agency for Development 

and Cooperation, to improve the 

performance of water and sanitation 

companies operating in urban areas. 

Local-language participatory tool kits 

have also been distributed in 61 

provinces, where women motivators 

have been trained to use the kits to 

raise the demand for safe water 

supply and sanitation services at the 

community level. 

In the Philippines, technical advice on 

resettlement and community participation 

have been provided for the preparation 

stage of the Solid Waste Ecological 

Enhancement Project. Similar support 

was provided during all stages of four 

large-scale World Bank Water Districts 

Development Projects and to the Local 

Government Unit Urban Water Supply 

and Sanitation Project. Plans are also 

being finalized for the Philippines Water 

Supply and Sanitation Sector Performance 

Enhancement Project, which 

includes the field testing of demandresponsive, 

incentive-driven approaches 

through a series of pilot projects to be 

supported by the World Bank and the 

Asian Development Bank. 

18 

In Indonesia, technical support is 

being given to the national government 

and the Asian Development Bank for 

development of an urban waste 

management strategy to be used in the 

development of Indonesia’s Seventh 

Five-Year Development Plan. The East 

Asia and Pacific office has collaborated 

with the Australian Agency for International 

Development in the design of 

China’s Twenty-First Century Urban 

Water Management Project. And the 

Program is conducting studies and 

developing strategies to target 

previously neglected urban areas in 

Lao PDR and Cambodia. 


The East Asia-Pacific team works with 

the Program’s South Asia office and 

other regional groups, external support 

agencies and governments to help 

develop sector strategies, improve the 

design and implementation of 

sustainable investment projects, and 

identify and disseminate best practices 

for rural water supply and sanitation 

service throughout the region. Efforts 

are being concentrated in countries 

which are expected to remain primarily 

rural over the next thirty years, namely 

Cambodia, Lao PDR, Mongolia, and 

Vietnam. Large-scale investments are 

being planned or implemented in all of 

these countries and continued in China, 

Indonesia, and the Philippines. 

The Program’s support for the 

participatory approach to sector reform 

in Lao PDR is characteristic of its 

emphasis on providing customized, 

facilitative support to nationally led 

initiatives and programs. During 

1997, technical and capacity-building 

support were provided for the 

preparatory stage of a World Bankfinanced 

provincial infrastructure 

project for Oudomxai and Phongsali 

provinces. The government’s National 

Water Supply and Environmental 

Health Program worked in partnership 

with related sector personnel and 

representatives from mass organizations 

of Lao women and youth to consult 

women and men in more than 30 

remote villages about their water and 


sanitation preferences, beliefs and 

practices. The findings of this consultation 

are being used to determine what types 

and levels of water and sanitation 

services rural Lao communities want and 

are willing to pay for and sustain. The 

consultation also gave communities 

insight into how they could maximize the 

impact of services on their quality of life. 

Another flagship activity is 

Indonesia’s Water Supply and Sanitation 

Project for Low-Income Communities 

(WSSLIC), which works to provide safe, 

reliable, and accessible water supply 

and sanitation services to some 2,000 

rural communities. Although the project is 

being implemented by Indonesia’s 

Ministries of Health, Public Works, and 

Internal Affairs, non-governmental 

organizations are extensively involved on 

a contractual basis, mainly to provide 

technical assistance. The East Asia-Pacific 

office has provided technical support 

and advice for all stages of this ongoing 

project and recently conducted an 

impact assessment of the project’s rules 

as part of a global Program study of 

sustainability in large-scale rural water 

supply projects. 

In the Philippines, the Program 

collaborated with the World Bank and 

other sector organizations to introduce 

community handpumps and participatory 

training in systems operation and 

maintenance to the First Water Supply, 

Sewerage and Sanitation Project in 

1997. Assistance was also provided to 

the Department of Interior and Local 

Government in the implemen-tation of the 

Community-Managed Water Supply and 

Sanitation Project, for which the Program 

prepared a sanitation tool kit, training 

and installation manuals, and a 

monitoring and evaluation guidebook. 

Design and advisory support were 

provided for the implementation of a 

rural water supply and sanitation strategy 

study and pilot project in Vietnam, which 

has provided valuable lessons for large 

investment projects throughout the region. 

The Program is also working in 

partnership with government agencies 

and other sector organizations to support 

policy reform and demonstrate new 

approaches in Cambodia and Mongolia.

Strengthening Sector Policies and 

Strategies 

The Program helps national g o v e rn - 

ments in the region with policy analysis 

and re f o rm initiatives, conducts factfinding 

missions, and form u l a t e s 

strategies and technical assistance 

p roposals. In Lao PDR, the Pro g r a m ’s 

policy and strategy collaboration with 

the Lao government, the Swedish 

I n t e rnational Development Cooperation 

Agency (Sida) and other regional and 

national-level organizations has helped 

initiate an evolving process of change 

and the scaling up and better ‘tailoring’ 

of sectoral activities. 

The Program also encourages 

regional learning and exchange 

initiatives to promote policy stre n g t h e n i n g 

and strategy formulation in other 

countries. For example, the Pro g r a m 

o rganized a working visit for a senior 

Lao delegation to Cambodia for an 

intensive exchange of ideas and joint 

field visits. This has fuelled interest in the 

development of a similar process of 

institutional strengthening and strategy 

development in Cambodia and a 

commitment by both countries to share 

ideas and experiences in the future. It 

has also led to the formulation in 

Cambodia of a proposal for a thre e - y e a r 

Planning and Capacity Building Project. 

Policy analysis and re f o rm initiatives 

a re also being supported in Indonesia, 

Vietnam and China. In addition, the 

P rogram will continue to help institutions 

operating within the Association of 

Southeast Asian Nations establish 

systems and capacities for applied 

policy re s e a rch, provision of technical 

advice, and financing assistance among 

member countries. In all these cases, a 

gradual, client-led approach is being 

taken to ensure national ownership of 

the resulting re f o rm s . 


The East Asia-Pacific team is contributing 

to a series of part i c i p a t o ry evaluations 

of water supply and sanitation pro j e c t s 

funded by a variety of donors, among 

them the World Bank, the Asian 

Development Bank, UNICEF and 

AusAID. The results are intended to 

Case Study: Lao PDR 

The Pro g r a m ’s recent activities in Lao PDR are typical of its emphasis 

on working with partner organizations, governments and 

communities to strengthen institutions and build local capacity rather 

than simply acting as a funding or advisory body. Since 1994 the 

P rogram, in collaboration with the Swedish International Development 

Cooperation Agency, has assisted the government of Lao PDR in the 

formulation and implementation of a comprehensive and dynamic 

sector strategy and action plan for its rural water supply and 

sanitation sector. Although the Program has offered advice, training, 

and other backstopping when requested, the process has been led 

throughout by Lao personnel and facilitated with backstopping from 

the East Asia and the Pacific regional office and other sector 

partners. The project has focused on maximizing national ownership 

of policy guidance, and has already provided a model for other 

countries and other sectors. 

The East Asia-Pacific team is now providing support to a similarly 

Lao-led provincial infrastructure project and is co-operating with the 

Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency to bring to 

fruition a series of second generation projects to provide piloting and 

learning opportunities for others working in the region. 

19

provide the evidence and impetus 

needed for policy reform in several 

countries of the region, where the same 

donors are heavily invested in the sector. 

These studies have been designed 

as participatory evaluations to elicit the 

client community’s own assessment of 

the impact of various projects on their 

lives. Men and women’s groups in the 

project communities are voicing their 

opinions as to what has worked, what 

has not, and why. Common methodologies 

used for all the studies are 

yielding growing empirical evidence 

that services are paid for, sustained 

and used most effectively by 

communities when project rules allow 

for informed choice among a range of 

possible service options, community 

groups are not passive contributors but 

rather have sufficient control over 

investment and maintenance decisions, 

and both men and women are 

adequately involved in key decisions 

regarding implementation, operation 

and maintenance. 

The Program has begun to use 

findings from these studies as the basis 

for policy analysis dialogues with 

sectoral agencies of the government in 

Indonesia. Two supplementary 

objectives being pursued simultaneously 

are the development of an 

institutional climate for participatory 

learning, and building national 

partnerships between government 

service delivery agencies and NGOs 

and academic research institutions 

which are carrying out the communitybased 

assessments. 

Since October 1997, as part of a 

global Program initiative exploring 

the links between sustainability, 

demand responsiveness, poverty and 

gender-sensitive participation, the 

East Asia-Pacific team has contributed 

to the development of participatory 

research methodology and tools for a 

series of participatory learning 

assessments. One assessment, funded 

by UNICEF, has already been 

completed in Indonesia and three 

others are planned in the region for 

1998-1999 in collaboration with the 

World Bank and AusAID. 

20 


Investments 

The Program contributes to the planning 

and demonstration of new technical 

and institutional models that are having 

a major influence on the development 

of large investments throughout the East 

Asia and Pacific region. Increased 

emphasis is now being placed on 

helping central and local governments 

develop appropriate investment projects. 

This includes pilot and demonstration 

projects that test and introduce innovative 

approaches, and lead to the preparation 

of large and sustainable investments 

by the World Bank and other international 

donors. 

The East Asia-Pacific office has 

played an important role in the design 

and implementation of large-scale 

investments in China, Indonesia, and 

the Philippines. These efforts include the 

review and evaluation of several 

ongoing projects, the organization of 

workshops and training programs, and 

the preparation of case studies and 

best-practice guidelines for planning 

and implementation of rural water 

supply and sanitation projects. 

To enhance the understanding of how 

the sustainability of large-scale projects 

can be improved, the East Asia-Pacific 

office and the Program’s South Asia 

office co-hosted the Asian Regional 

Consultation in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 

January 1998. This workshop, 

sponsored by the World Health 

Organization, brought together 80 sector 

professionals from 14 countries to share 

experiences from across the region on 

innovative ways to support sustainable 

investment in large-scale rural water 

supply and sanitation projects. 

In Lao PDR, institutional strengthening, 

greater involvement by nongovernmental 

organizations and 

renewed interest from donors are 

leading to a new generation of 

investments, such as the provincial 

infrastructure project for Oudomxai and 

Phongsali provinces and the second 

phase of the National Water Supply 

and Environmental Health Program. 

Support is also being provided for the 

development of national strategies for 


water supply and sanitation programs 

in Cambodia, China, Mongolia and 

Vietnam. 


Country and regional forums have 

been established to foster networks of 

specialists and decision-makers in each 

country and throughout the region. 

National advisory groups have begun 

work, and the first meeting of the 

regional advisory group was held in 

Jakarta in September 1997. This 

initiative has greatly expanded the 

scope and relevance of the East Asia- 

Pacific team’s learning and 

communications agenda. 

The Program documents key lessons 

taken from case studies for use in 

project modification and restructuring 

and for dissemination to governments 

and sector organizations working in 

other parts of the region. A case study 

on the link between demand-based 

project rules and sustainability in 

Indonesia, for example, was part of 

an international Program study on 

which types of project rules are most 

likely to lead to sustainability in largescale 


projects. The East Asia Pacific team has 

also prepared case studies, reports and 

working papers for presentation at 

international conferences and seminars, 

such as the Community Water Supply 

and Sanitation Conference held in 

Washington, DC in May 1998. 

Regional and national workshops 

and conferences play a key role in the 

Program’s learning and communications 

agenda. Along with the Asian Regional 

Consultation in1998, the East Asia- 

Pacific office has supported conferences 

on urban and peri-urban sanitation 

in Indonesia and Vietnam and a 

workshop on urban strategic 

sanitation in the Philippines. The 

Program also seeks to build on 

potential for inter-country sharing by 

sponsoring initiatives such as an ongoing 

exchange of field visits between Lao and 

Cambodian sector officials. 

To complement its published 

materials, the Program has also been 

moving toward other, wider-reaching


media such as television. In Indonesia, 

for example, as part of the Water 

Supply and Sanitation Project for Low- 

Income Communities, the Program 

helped produce and obtain free air 

time for a public-service television spot 

on safe hygiene and sanitation habits 

targeted at children. 

Finally, listening to communities 

remains one of the most important parts 

of the Program’s learning and 

communications agenda. Support for 

the community consultation phase of 

the Lao PDR provincial infrastructure 

project for Oudomxai and Phongsali 

reflects the emphasis of the Program 

and its partners on listening to 

communities. 

Challenges Ahead 

The Program’s rural water and sanitation 

activities in the East Asia and Pacific 

region will focus principally on those 

countries whose economies and demo- 

Selected Activities for East Asia and the Pacific 

Regional 

• Formation of Regional and National 

Advisory Groups 

• Association of Southeast Asian Nations 

• Regional Urban Water and Sanitation 

Pilot Programs 

Indonesia 

• Community-Based Solid Waste 

Management: Best-Practice Guidelines 

• Case Studies of Large-scale Rural Water 

and Sanitation Projects. 

• National Workshop and Conference on 

Urban and Peri-urban Sanitation 

• Water and Sanitation Sector Forum 

• Water Supply and Sanitation Project for 

Low-Income Communities: Strategic 

Supervision 

• Water Supply and Sanitation Strategy 

and Action Plan 

• Urban Waste Management Strategy 

• Preparation and Supervision Support For 

Sanitation Component of Second East Java 

Urban Development Project 

• Evaluation of Sanitation Activities Under 

the Kampong Improvement Program In the 

Third Jakarta Urban Development Project 

• Review of Septic Tank and Solid Waste 

Management Practices in Palu and Manado 

graphics are expected to remain largely 

rural over the next several years. These 

countries include Cambodia, Lao PDR, 

Mongolia and Vietnam. The Program 

must also continue efforts to promote 

some of its more successful and 

innovative programs -- particularly the 

participatory, nationally-led approach to 

sector policy reform in Lao PDR (soon to 

be adopted in Cambodia) and the 

comprehensive study of RWSS projects 

financed by a wide range of external 

support agencies in Indonesia -- as 

models for support and advice to governments 

formulating or modifying rural 

water supply and sanitation strategies. 

The Program must continue to focus 

on ways to meet the growing need for 

urban environmental sanitation services 

as well. Increasing investment in 

projects which increase the volume of 

clean drinking water within East Asia’s 

cities are leading to ever-increasing 

levels of waste water and water 

Lao PDR 

• HASWAS Project Preparation 

• Preparation For Phase II of Sida Support 

Cambodia 

• Rural Water Supply and Sanitation 

Sector Strategy and Action Plan 

China 

• Guangxi Urban Environment Project 

• Hubei Urban Environment Project 

• Second Rural Water Supply and 

Sanitation Project: Midterm Review and 

Evaluation 

• Design for 21st Century Urban Water 

Management Project financed by UNDP 

and AusAID 

• Hubei Nightsoil Management Study 

Mongolia 

• Development of a National Water 

Supply and Sanitation Program for the 

Twenty-first Century 

• Water Supply and Sanitation Technical 

Assistance and Capacity Building 

Demonstration Project 

The Philippines 

• Solid Waste Ecological 

resource pollution. This problem is not 

being adequately addressed, in part 

because of inappropriate technical, 

organizational and financial policy 

frameworks. The Program must double 

its efforts to promote efficient and 

effective neighborhood-level 

approaches to urban environmental 

sanitation, in peri-urban areas in 

particular. To meet this growing 

challenge, the Program’s East Asia- 

Pacific team must continue to assist 

governments and neighborhood-based 

organizations in the design and 

implementation of pilot and demonstration 

projects which introduce and 

test innovative approaches, leading to 

the preparation of large and sustainable 

investments. 

Enhancement Project 

• Philippines Water Supply and Sanitation 

• Sector Performance Enhancement Project 

• World Bank Water Districts 

Development Projects 

• Local Government Unit Urban Water 

Supply and Sanitation Project 

Vietnam 

• National Urban and Peri-urban 

Sanitation Conference 

• Pilot Demonstration Project for Rural 


• Training Courses on Water Supply 

and Sanitation 

• Support For Design and Supervision 

Urban Water Supply and Sanitation 

Projects financed by the World Bank 

• Vietnam Women's Union for 

Participatory Training Project 

• Training and Institutional Capacity 

Needs Assessment for the Water Supply 

and Sanitation Sector 

• Advisory support for National Rural 

Water and Sanitation Strategy Study 

• Design of the Water and Sanitation 

component of the Mekong Delta Water 

Resources Development Project 

21

Overview 

The West and Central Africa 

region includes a diverse group of 

twenty countries with a total 

population of about 264 million 

people. About two thirds of the 

rural population (114 million 

people) and one third of the urban 

population (31million people) of 

these countries are without safe 

drinking water. Even greater 

numbers of people -- half of those 

living in urban areas (45 million 

people) and 85 percent of the 

population in rural areas (151 

million people) -- lack adequate 

sanitation facilities. 

The Program’s West and 

Central Africa team continues to 

be active in seven countries in the 

region: Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte 

d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Mali 

and Senegal. In addition, after a 

long period of instability in 

Congo and Togo, the Program 

has re-established contact and is 

assessing the water supply and 

sanitation situation in these 

countries to identify opportunities 

for the support of program 

design and implementation. The 

combined population of these 

nine countries is over 78 million 

22 


ABIDJAN, CÔTE D’IVOIRE 


BENIN 

BURKINA FASO 

CONGO 

CÔTE D’IVOIRE 

GHANA 

MALI 

SENEGAL 


and is projected to increase to 

114 million by 2010. 

The West and Central Africa 

team collaborates with the 

Programs’ East and Southern Africa 

office and other international 

development agencies to document 

and disseminate best practices for 

the delivery of water supply and 

sanitation services in Africa and has 

sponsored a number of initiatives 

to support and encourage the 

emerging trend toward publicprivate 

collaboration in the sector. 

The West African phase of the 

World Bank Water Utilities 

Partnership for Capacity Building 

in Africa (WUP) will be launched 

with a workshop in Côte d’Ivoire 

in July 1998. 

In the rural water supply and 

sanitation sector, demandresponsive 

approaches are being 

promoted in pilot projects which 

include demand-based financing 

mechanisms such as cost-sharing 

arrangements with the communities 

benefiting from water supply and 

sanitation programs. Ghana’s 

Community Water and Sanitation 

Program is one of the Programs’ 

flagship activities in the region. The 

Program is sponsoring similar pilot 

projects in Benin, Burkina Faso and 

Mali, and is documenting lessons 

learned from these projects for use 

in formulating rural water supply 

and sanitation strategies in these 

and other countries in the region. 


The Program is working to 

raise the profile of sanitation in 

the region by supporting and 

promoting the importance of 

sanitation components in largescale 

investment projects and 

encouraging national governments 

and politicians to support the 

formulation of strategic sanitation 

policies. Efforts are being aimed at 

rapidly growing peri-urban areas 

in particular, which are often 

neglected due to a tendency to 

focus sanitation activities in city 

centers. The Program has 

supported a number of pilot 

projects to test various options 

and strategies and is helping 

governments use these experiences 

to develop national 

sanitation strategies. The West 

and Central Africa office also 

hosted the Regional Urban 

Environmental Sanitation 

Workshop in Grand Bassam, Côte 

d’Ivoire in November 1997. 

Government officials and 

representatives from international 

development agencies, nongovernmental 

organizations and 

the private sector met to exchange 

ideas, experiences, methods and 

new strategic approaches in the 

field of sanitation and to prepare 

programs of action for the countries 

of Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, 

Ghana, Guinea and Senegal. 

Despite considerable progress 

in the design and implementation


of successful programs, rapid 

population growth is greatly 

increasing the demand for clean 

water and adequate sanitation in 

the region, particularly in urban 

and peri-urban areas. Even if 

investments increase, the number 

of unserved people will continue 

to rise unless practices and 

policies are changed. To meet this 

challenge, the West and Central 

Africa team must double its efforts 

to scale up and spread news of 

successful demonstration projects, 

build capacity, and increase 

stakeholder awareness through 

dialogue and information 

exchange among its partners and 

clients in the region. 


Lack of adequate sanitation remains 

one of the most serious causes of 

public health problems in urban areas, 

and people are paying large amounts 

of money for unsafe services and to 

treat water- and sanitation-related 

diseases. As massive numbers continue 

to move to urban and peri-urban areas, 

this problem is exacerbated by overreliance 

on the poorly equipped public 

sector, with its weak institutions and 

ineffective and inappropriate sanitation 

approaches. Improvements in urban 

and peri-urban water supply coverage 

have increased the need for sanitation 

services as well, as the amount of 

waste water in these areas has 

increased while safe waste water 

treatment remains virtually non-existent. 

Urban environmental sanitation, 

therefore, continues to be one of the 

top priorities on the West and Central 

Africa team’s agenda. The Program is 

supporting demand-driven strategic 

sanitation approaches throughout the 

region based on successful pilot 

projects in the cities of Kumasi, Ghana 

and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. 

Both projects have provided important 

lessons about social intermediation and 

financial contribution by communities, 

and the Program is now working to 

replicate the program in cities in Côte 

d’Ivoire and in other parts of Burkina 

Faso. The Program also continues to 

support initiatives targeted at peri-urban 

areas, such as the Peri-Urban Water 

Supply Project in Bamako, Mali and 

development of a national urban and 

peri-urban sanitation strategy for Senegal. 

The Program assisted in the 

formulation of national urban environmental 

sanitation strategies and policies 

at a regional workshop involving the 

West African countries of Burkina Faso, 

Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea and 

Senegal in November 1997. The 

workshop was part of a broader 

Regional Urban Environmental Sanitation 

initiative launched earlier in 1997 

and offered an opportunity for country 

team members to exchange ideas and 

experiences in the sector and address 

the need for wider political commitment, 

greater partnership between the public 

and private sectors, and the 

development of cost-recovery methods 

Case Study: Ghana 

and other financing mechanisms to 

achieve sustainable, demand-responsive 

sanitation strategies. National and locallevel 

capacity building were a chief 

focus of the workshop. 


Although population growth in rural 

areas is not as explosive as in the 

cities, it continues to outpace increases 

in rural water supply and sanitation 

service. The Program is working to 

meet this challenge by collaborating 

with other regional groups, support 

agencies, and governments to develop 

national sector strategies, and by 

continuing to promote community-based 

approaches that mobilize water users 

and enable them to make informed 

choices about the services they want 

and are willing to maintain. 

The Program has assisted 

governments in the formulation of 

Ghana’s Community Water and Sanitation Program (CWSP), 

launched with support from the Program’s West and Central Africa 

office, has proved to be a model case for the demand-responsive 

approach. Under the new program, the community initiates and 

makes informed choices about service options. Based on its 

willingness to pay for the service level chosen, the community also 

accepts responsibility for all operation and maintenance costs. The 

Community Water and Sanitation Division sets national policies and 

strategies and creates an enabling environment for all stakeholders, 

and the community (along with its legal representative, the district 

assembly) owns and is responsible for sustaining the water facilities. 

Despite the government’s initial concerns about managing such 

extensive change in a small, low-income rural community, 

acceptance of the demand-responsive approach has been swift: 

community involvement (including women) is high and there is 

overwhelming evidence that communities regard the facilities as 

their own. Having the project coincide with the government’s efforts 

at decentralization and other social and economic reform showed 

excellent timing, particularly as demand had shot far above the 

ability of the government to meet it. Still, the districts need to 

become even more responsible for moving the process along, and 

would also benefit greatly from increased donor funds. 

The West and Central Africa Group is currently working with 

Ghana’s Community Water and Sanitation Division to revise the 

program to meet these challenges but all in all, great progress has 

already been made: of the 50 districts in the project area, 23 have 

formed district water and sanitation teams, and roughly 78 percent 

of the population served is drinking from improved water sources. 

23

national sector strategies in Benin, 

Burkina Faso, Ghana and Mali. 

Although these strategies are tailored 

to specific national conditions and 

customs, they all share certain key 

elements, such as community 

participation, increased involvement 

of the private sector and nongovernmental 

organizations, and 

decentralized management. 

In Ghana, the Program is assisting 

in the preparation of the second, IDAfinanced 

Community Water and 

Sanitation Project. Although considerable 

progress has been achieved 

since the launching of the original 

project, an impact study has shown 

that services need to be delivered more 

quickly to reduce per capita costs, and 

that poorer communities could benefit 

more from the program if technical 

options were more varied and flexible. 

These findings are being incorporated 

into project modification and design 

for both the first and second projects, 

and efforts are also being made to 

establish a water fund to ensure that 

poorer communities can gain access to 

the program as well. 

The Program also supports 

workshops to bring together sector 

professionals working in different 

countries and provinces. In June 1998, 

for example, a workshop was held in 

Bamako, Mali, where the Program 

worked with the Direction National de 

l’Hydraulique et de l’Energie (DNHE) 

to update Mali’s rural water supply 

and sanitation strategy. The workshop 

24 

convened key actors working in the 

sector in Mali as well as representatives 

of the Direction de l’Hydraulique from 

Benin, who were able to share their 

more extensive experience in strategy 

formulation and implementation with 

their Mali counterparts. 


Empowering communities to take 

greater responsibility for the provision 

and management of basic services is 

essential, and ensuring the participation 

of women in all aspects of the project 

cycle is necessary for the success and 

sustainability of projects in both rural 

and peri-urban areas. Human resource 

development, institutional strengthening, 

and greater involvement by nongovernmental 

organizations are 

important elements of the Program’s 

strategy, which focuses on participatory 

and gender-sensitive approaches to 

development in the water supply and 


To promote participatory development 

and the streamlining of gender 

into the design and implementation of 

water supply and sanitation projects, 

the West and Central Africa team 

supports collaboration with key 

partners and has organized seminars, 

workshops, and retreats focusing on 

strategic partnership among 

stakeholders. In the Water Supply 

Project in the periphery of Bamako, 

Mali, for example, the Program has 

introduced participatory methods into 

project planning and implementation, 

and has established several key rules to 

enhance the participation of women in 

this peri-urban project, especially at the 

decision-making level. The project has 

now been running for nearly six years, 

and the Program is in the process of 

documenting the experiences of this 

project, with particular emphasis on the 

project’s participatory and gender 

components. In other parts of the 

region, the Program supervises nongovernmental 

organizations that assist 

communities in choosing service levels 

based on their willingness to pay. 


and Strategies 

The development of clear and coherent 

national strategies for water supply 

and sanitation is an urgent priority and 

the Program has been active in the 

updating of detailed action plans in 

countries throughout the region. In 

addition to assisting in the updating 

of Mali’s rural water supply and 

sanitation strategy, the Program 

provided similar support to the 

updating of a detailed sanitation 

policy action plan in Benin, the results 

of which are being documented to aid 

in replication in other projects 

throughout the region. The Program 

has also assisted in the formulation of 

a water and sanitation sector policy in 

Congo and a national urban sanitation 

strategy in Senegal, which emphasizes 

demand-based and participatory 

approaches to the provision of services 

in peri-urban areas.

The Program also conducts mid-term 

reviews of ongoing projects, such as 

Côte d’Ivoire’s Muncipal Support 

Project and Burkina Faso’s Project for 

Improving Urban Living Conditions. 

These findings are being documented 

for use in the modification of projects 

and national sector strategies and 

policies in these and other countries in 

the region. 


Investments 

The Program continues to support the 

p reparation and implementation of 

investment projects funded by the Wo r l d 

Bank and other donors in Benin, Burkina 

Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, 

Mali, and Senegal. To improve access 

by the poor to safe water and 

sanitation, the West and Central Africa 

G roup promotes innovative appro a c h e s 

to strategic sanitation planning, demandbased 

service delivery, decentralized 

decision making, and community 

p a rticipation. Support for sustainable 

investments is often preceded by pilot 

p rojects and other sector work leading 

to the formulation of policies and 

strategies. The West and Central Africa 

o ffice also plays an important role in 

fostering communication and coo 

rdination between countries and 

e x t e rnal support agencies. 

In June 1998, the West and Central 

Africa Program sponsored a stakeholder 

workshop in Dakar, Senegal to 

discuss, evaluate and refine the 

strategy of the Senegal Long Te rm 

Water Supply Project. This strategy 

advocates a community-based 

a p p roach in which users choose the 

level of service they want to pay for 

and encourages the involvement of 

small enterprises and providers to 

s u p p o rt the delivery of serv i c e s . 

Utilities serve as the institutional 

anchors and communities are 

responsible for operation and 

maintenance at the local level. Both 

communities and utilities may contract 

private operators to ensure all or part 

of service delivery at the local level (for 

components such as standpipe 

management, pit-emptying, construction 

and maintenance of facilities and 

i n f r a s t ru c t u res, and operation and 

maintenance of operating facilities). 

The strategy seeks to exploit the 

comparative advantage of all actors: 

the capacity of utilities to serv e 

communities in poor and underserviced 

areas, the ability of the private sector 

to deliver services at an affordable 

price, and the capacity of communities 

to organize to express demand. 

In Mali eff o rts have been focused 

on providing support for the 

development of a national strategy for 

rural water supply and sanitation. The 

June 1998 workshop organized in 

collaboration with the Direction 

National de l’Hydraulique et de 

l’Energie (DNHE) focused on four main 

themes to be incorporated in Mali’s 

national strategy: effective ways to 

further the decentralization process, the 

involvement of the private sector in the 

provision of water and sanitation, 

financial aspects (with emphasis on 

demand-responsiveness and costsharing 

arrangements) and the choice 

of appropriate technologies. The 

workshop also resulted in a commitment 

by the DNHE to assume a new 

role as a promoter of sector activities 

and a facilitator of greater private 

sector participation. 


The West and Central Africa off i c e 

documents and disseminates key lessons 

and approaches in published case 

studies, and pre p a res guidelines and 

manuals based on its own experience 

working in the region, for dissemination 

to national partners and training 

centers. The Program has carried out a 

regional study on community-managed 

water supply systems in five countries to 

d e t e rmine the impact of management 

systems on sustainability and user 

satisfaction. This study was carried out 

in 26 villages and small towns in Benin, 

Burkina Faso, Côte D’Ivoire, Ghana 

and Mali, and covered small piped 

water systems across a wide range of 

d i ff e rent technological options and 

levels of service. The West and Central 

Africa team has also contributed to a 

global Program study by assessing the 

impact of institutional rules on ru r a l 

water supply sustainability in Benin. 

The Program plays a supporting 

role in supervising, monitoring, and 

evaluating projects so that lessons can 

be fed back into the redesign, 

25

Selected Activities for West and 

Central Africa 

Regional 

• Regional Networking & 

Communication 

• Regional Case Study: Management 

Of Community Piped WSS 

• Regional Urban Environmental 

Sanitation 

• Water Utilities & Services for the 

Urban poor 

Benin 

• Rural Water Supply and Sanitation 

Project 

• Environmental Sanitation Policy 

Implementation 

Burkina Faso 

• Urban Environment Project 

Congo 

• Advisory Support for the National 

Water and Sanitation Sector Strategy 

Côte d'Ivoire 

• Municipal Support Project 

• Water Resources Management 

Strategy 

Ghana 

• Community Water Supply and 

Sanitation Project 

Guinea 

• Urban Environmental Sanitation 

Strategy 

Mali 

• Peri-urban Water Supply Project in 

Bamako 

• Rural Infrastructure Project 

Senegal 

• WSS Policy 

Togo 

• Water Supply Sector Strategy 

26 

modification or restructuring of these 

projects as they are being implemented. 

Such lessons are valuable because they 

are often relevant to other ongoing 

projects and future project design and 

are useful in developing guidelines for 

best practices. The findings from the 

monitoring and evaluation of ongoing 

projects in Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina 

Faso have been documented and 

disseminated to stakeholders involved in 

these and similar projects, and have 

been used in the development of new 

projects and strategies throughout West 

and Central Africa. 

The Program has also shared 

information on innovative approaches 

and successful experiences at 

collaborative meetings and gatherings 

such as the international, World Bankhosted 


Sanitation Conference in Washington, 

DC in May 1998, and regional 

United Nations Children’s Fund/World 

Health Organization seminars on 

health and sanitation in Africa. 

Workshops and seminars such as 

these play a key role in the Program’s 

learning and communications agenda 

as they facilitate direct sharing of 

knowledge and experience among 

partners working in different countries 

or regions. 

The Challenges Ahead 

Given high population growth rates 

and the rapid depletion of natural 

resources, the region faces significant 

challenges in rural water supply and 

urban sanitation. Even if investments 

increase, the number of unserved 

people will continue to rise unless 

practices and policies are changed. 

Another challenge is how to meet 

growing demand for program support 

in countries emerging from civil 

conflict. The Program’s West and 

Central Africa team will increasingly 

focus its efforts on scaling up 

successful demonstration projects, 

building capacity, and increasing 

stakeholder awareness through 

dialogue and information exchange. 

Responding to the expressed demand 

of governments and national stake- 


holders, the Program will continue to: 

• provide support in formulating and 

strengthening sector strategies and 

policies; 

• develop partnerships and 

institutional arrangements to test sector 

strategies through pilot projects; 

• disseminate lessons learned from 

innovative and successful approaches 

to strategy formulation and investment 

projects; 

• provide support in the design, 

preparation and supervision of 

projects; 

• reinforce national and local capacity 

so that communities develop skills on 

management of water supply and 

sanitation services; 

• elaborate sound strategies for Post 

Conflict Emergency and Rehabilitation 

in countries such as Congo and Sierra 

Leone; and 

• use case studies to test and develop 

mechanisms and options for financing 

small service providers in the delivery 

of water and sanitation services.


Overview 

The Program’s regional office for 

East and Southern Africa is active 

in five countries -- Eritrea, Ethiopia, 

Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda -and 

has recently expanded its 

activities to include Rwanda, 

Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia 

and Zimbabwe. These ten 

countries account for about 80% 

of the population of the region 

and include countries where 

poverty and water scarcity are 

most prevalent. 

Lack of access to water and 

sanitation services is at the heart of 

the poverty trap as it is the poor 

who pay the most for water and 

who suffer the most in terms of 

health and lost economic 

opportunities. Over the last decade, 

water and sanitation coverage in 

the region has slightly increased 

but investments have not kept pace 

with population growth, especially 

in the fast-expanding informal 

urban settlements of East Africa. 

The region’s move toward 

market-oriented and pluralistic 

societies holds promise for 

increased attention to basic water 

and sanitation services, and 

progress is being made. In one of 


NAIROBI, KENYA 


ERITREA 

ETHIOPIA 

KENYA 

MALAWI 

MOZAMBIQUE 

RWANDA 

TANZANIA 

UGANDA 

ZAMBIA 

ZIMBABWE 


the most densely populated informal 

settlements in sub-Saharan 

Africa, for example, the Kibera 

Water Distribution and Infilling 

Component of Kenya’s Third 

Nairobi Water Supply Project has 

improved the health and wellbeing 

of the urban poor through 

delivery of adequate clean water. 

A Program-supported impact study 

of this project has also led to the 

development of a sanitation pilot 

program to serve the nine villages 

of this sprawling settlement. 

The Program also supports 

broader regional initiatives to 

encourage and support demandresponsive 

water supply and 

sanitation programs. One of the 

East and Southern Africa team’s 

flagship activities is the 

Participatory Hygiene and 

Sanitation Transformation (PHAST) 

program, which has been pilottested 

in Botswana, Ethiopia, 

Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe. 

Unlike previous, top-down 

approaches which tended to be 

more uniform, PHAST is tailored 

to the needs and wants of each 

community and has led to a 

significant reduction in sanitationrelated 

disease. 

Nevertheless, the number of 

people without adequate water 

supply and sanitation services in 

the region’s urban areas 

continues to increase. Operation 

and maintenance of existing 

systems is a major problem and if 

current trends continue unabated, 

the number of people not served 

by water supply and sanitation 

could double by 2020 as more 

people migrate to the urban 

centers from rural areas. 

The critical challenge facing the 

region’s water supply and 

sanitation sector is to step up the 

pace at which the poor are 

gaining improved access to 

sustainable water and sanitation 

services. Meeting this challenge 

through demand-based 

approaches will require the 

updating of policy frameworks, 

effective decentralization, broader 

involvement of communities and 

mobilization of the local private 

sector. In 1997 and the first half 

of 1998, the Program -- in 

consultation with various partners 

and sector stakeholders, including 

the World Bank -- supported policy 

and strategy formulation through 

sector working groups (in Kenya, 

Malawi, Rwanda and Tanzania); 

helped prepare pilot projects and 

sector investment programs (in 

Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, 

Tanzania and Zimbabwe); provided 

implementation assistance (in 

Eritrea, Ethiopia, Malawi and 

Uganda); and supported monitoring 

and evaluation systems (in 

Uganda). The Program has also 

pursued an extensive learning 

agenda through case studies (on 

27

Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi 

and Tanzania), reviews and 

evaluations (on Eritrea, Ethiopia, 

Kenya, Rwanda, and on PHAST 

and other gender-focused 

programs) and study tours (for 

Eritrea, Malawi, Mozambique 

and Tanzania). 


The Program team in East and Southern 

Africa collaborates with its regional 

partners in providing opportunities for 

the exchange of information and best 

practices on urban environmental 

sanitation. At a workshop held in May 

1997, a regional urban environmental 

sanitation support strategy was initiated 

which has helped raise the profile of 

sanitation in many countries in the 

region. Follow-on activities include 

support for urban water and 

environmental sanitation working 

groups in Kenya and Zambia. 

As part of the Third Nairobi Water 

Supply Project, the Program assisted in 

the design and implementation of 

sociological inputs to the water 

distribution infilling component in 

Kibera, a peri-urban area with about 

500,000 residents (see box page 29). 

The preparatory phase included a 

rapid needs assessment, which 

revealed that excreta disposal was the 

highest priority of five of the nine 

villages. The findings of this study 

led to the development of the Kibera 

Urban Environmental Sanitation Pilot, 

which will support improved excreta 

disposal and solid waste drainage. 


The Program continues to promote 

demand-responsive approaches to rural 

water supply and sanitation (RWSS) 

that mobilize water users and enable 

them to make informed choices about 

the services they want and for which 

they will assume responsibility. A 

regional workshop was organized in 

collaboration with the government of 

Malawi and UNICEF in June 1997 to 

share learning and build consensus on 

the practical applications of the 

demand-responsive approach. 

28 

The workshop drew participants from 

Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, 

Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, 

Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, who 

resolved to take steps to foster greater 

use and development of the local 

private sector and to implement phased 

transition programs for institutional 

reform, capacity building and learning. 

Participants also agreed on the need 

for enhanced communication and 

awareness among communities, local 

authorities and politicians, and for the 

creation of funding mechanisms that 

allow direct access by communities. 

Follow-on activities have included the 

establishment of RWSS working groups 

in Kenya and Zambia. The Program 

continues to support these working 

groups, made up of RWSS stakeholders, 

to ensure that the demandresponsive 

approach moves from policy 

to practice in the field. 

A case study on the Rural Water 

and Sanitation Eastern Uganda Project 

Phase I (RUWASA I) was carried out as 

part of a global comparative analysis of 

the impact of institutional rules on 

sustainability of rural water supply 

programs. The findings of this study 

have been valuable to the Program in 

its efforts to further promote the 

importance of community participation 

for the sustainability of RWSS projects 

in Uganda and elsewhere in the region. 


The Program’s East and Southern Africa 

office has been at the forefront of a 

number of initiatives to promote the 

effective involvement of women and to 

incorporate gender considerations in the 

design, implementation and sustainability 

of water and sanitation projects. 

A regional workshop entitled 

‘Women’s Participation and Gender 

Consideration in Water Supply and 

Sanitation’ was organized in 

collaboration with UNESCO, UNICEF 

and the South African Water Research 

Commission in Pretoria, South Africa in 

November 1997. The workshop 

promoted better understanding of the 

importance of gender participation for 

community-based water and sanitation, 


and cultivated commitment to accommodate 

gender participation in sector 

policy and projects. It launched a 

regional network for learning and 

exchange on gender issues in water 

supply and sanitation programs and 

initiated country-level follow-on activities, 

including regionally coordinated gender 

assessments. The latter is part of the 

Participatory Learning and Action 

Initiative launched in October 1997 in 

The Hague, the Netherlands, which 

builds on collaboration between the 

Program and the International Water 

and Sanitation Center. 

Typical of its emphasis on gendersensitive, 

community participation in 

water supply and sanitation projects is 

the Program’s support for the 

Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation 

Transformation (PHAST) method, piloted 

and implemented in Botswana, Ethiopia, 

Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe. 

PHAST is a participatory program 

designed to help communities improve 

their hygiene practices and manage 

their own water and sanitation 

programs. The underlying principle of 

PHAST is that in order to make a 

permanent change in hygiene 

behavior, people must understand the 

cause of disease and how it is 

transmitted. PHAST extension workers 

employ a variety of participatory 

methods and tools to educate 

communities and help them decide 

what facilities they need and who will 

build them. In the 26 districts in which 

PHAST has been pilot-tested, there has 

been an enthusiastic response from 

communities and a massive reduction 

in diarrheal disease. 

In addition to its support for the 

pilot-testing phase, the Program has 

extensively documented and disseminated 

the methods and progress of 

this innovative, participatory program 

so that its success can be replicated 

elsewhere in the region. PHAST 

exemplifies the Program’s belief that 

communities, when armed with the 

necessary information and support, 

are capable of playing a key role in 

the planning, implementation, and 

maintenance of their own projects.




The Program has recruited five Country 

Sector Advisors (CSAs) familiar with 

sector institutions and policies in their 

respective countries. The CSAs -- who 

are based in Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, 

Mozambique and Rwanda -- facilitate 

sector reform, provide strategic 

technical inputs, oversee collection and 

dissemination of information, and liaise 

with clients and partners in their 

respective countries. 

In addition to supporting sector 

policy review workshops in Rwanda and 

Tanzania, the Program assisted in the 

review of sector policy and the 

preparation and implementation of 

sectoral consultations in Kenya and 

Uganda. Two volumes of the Rwanda 

policy workshop proceedings were 

published by the East and Southern 

Africa office on behalf of the government 

and have been widely distributed. 

In Kenya, the Program and the 

RWSS Working Group collaborated on 

an issues paper for the development of 

a Kenya Rural Water Supply and 

Sanitation Pilot Project. The project 

aims to develop and test strategies for 

policy implementation through practical 

application in selected project areas. 

Other aims of the pilot project include 

development of a framework for a 

national RWSS program in which all 

stakeholders participate, and 

increasing community involvement in 

the identification, preparation and 

implementation of the project and the 

national program under the guidance 

of the Ministry of Water Resources. 

The Program has supported similar 

working groups in Rwanda, Zambia 

and Zimbabwe. 

Supporting Sustainable Investment 

Social Funds in Eritrea, Ethiopia and 

Malawi have emerged as important 

sources of funding for community-based 

water and sanitation projects. Though 

relatively new, this World Bank financing 

mechanism is gaining popularity in 

the region: out of those established in 

the region since 1994, three have 

substantial water components. 

Improved Water Supply and Sanitation to Residents in Kibera, Kenya 

With a population currently estimated at 500,000 the informal 

settlement of Kibera, at the center of the Kenyan city of Nairobi, is 

one of the most densely populated human settlements in sub- 

Saharan Africa. Inadequate water supply and sanitation tops the list 

of infrastructure problems facing this rapidly growing settlement, 

which is home to 25 percent of Nairobi’s population. 

The Kibera Water Distribution Infilling Component of the Third 

Nairobi Water Supply Project seeks to improve the well-being of 

Kibera’s residents and to deliver adequate clean water to all nine 

villages of the sprawling settlement. Specifically, the Kibera project 

aims to reduce the price of water, to effect more reliable water 

supply delivery and management, and to enhance the role of the 

independent private sector in the delivery of water and sanitation 

services in Kibera. 

The Program’s East and Southern Africa office provided 

sociological inputs to the project, implementation support , and 

documentation of all stages of the project so that lessons learned 

can be replicated elsewhere. Support has focused on forging 

partnerships between the Nairobi City Council’s Water and Sewerage 

Department and Kibera’s communities to reinforce the sustainability 

of the settlement’s water supply system. 

The National Sanitation Forum held in Uganda in October 1997 

brought together 350 participants, including members of parliament, 

permanent secretaries, directors and commissioners of relevant 

government ministries, representatives of NGOs, the private sector, 

the donor community and training institutions, and religious and 

cultural leaders. The participants developed a ten-point strategy for 

action to halt the negative health, economic and environmental 

impacts of Uganda’s poor sanitation situation 

29

Selected Activities for East and Southern Africa 

Regional 

• Regional Workshop On DRA to CWSS 

• Documentation of PHAST, Including a 

Videotape 

• Regional Workshop on UES 

• Regional Workshop on Women’s 

P a rticipation and Gender Consideration in WSS 

• Preparation Support for WUP Project on 

Strengthening Capacity of Water Utilities 

Eritrea 

• Implementation Support to the Eritrea 

Community Development Fund Project 

• Documentation of Lessons Learned from 

Eritrea Community Development Fund 

Ethiopia 

• Implementation Support to the Ethiopia 

Social Rehabilitation and Development Fund 

Project 

• Support to the Development of a Concept 

Paper on Operation and Maintenance of 

RWS 

• Documentation of UES Case Study in 

Addis Ababa 

• Support to the Workshop on Integration 

of Lessons from the UES Case Study in 

Addis Ababa 

Kenya 

• Support to RWSS and UES Working 

Groups 

30 

• Documentation of Legal and Institutional 

Options for Community Management of 

Water Supplies 

• Implementation Support to the Third 

Nairobi Water Supply Project 

• Preparation Support for the Kibera Urban 

Environmental Sanitation Project 

• Facilitation of a Stakeholder Consultation 

on Sanitation For the Poor In Mombasa 

Malawi 

• Establishment of RWSS Stakeholder 

Forum 

• Implementation Support to the National 

Water Development Project 

• Implementation Support to Malawi Social 

Action Fund 

• Support to the Project Identification 

Workshop on the Objectives and 

Intervention Measures of Water and 

Sanitation Sector up to the Year 2020 

Mozambique 

• Implementation Support to the National 

Water Development Project - I 

• Preparation Support for the Inhambane 

Pilot Project 

Rwanda 

• Support to the Consultation Process for 

Sector Policy Development 

• Support to the Sector Policy Workshop 

• Advice on Community Participation In a 

Pilot Program For Solid Waste Management 

In Kigali 

Tanzania 

• Preparation Support For the Dar Es 

Salaam Water Supply Project 

• Implementation Support To Urban Sector 

Rehabilitation Project 

• Support To the RWSS Policy Review 

Workshop 

Uganda 

• Support To the Task Force Of the 

National Sanitation Forum 

• Support To the Small Towns Water and 

Sanitation Project 

• Workshop On Monitoring and Evaluation 

For Water Sector Practitioners 

Zambia 

• Implementation Support To the Urban 

Reconstruction and Water Supply Project 

• Support For Establishment Of UES and 

RWSS Working Groups 

Zimbabwe 

• Support For Rural Water Sector Review 

Workshop 

• Preparation Support For the Community 

Action Project


In Ethiopia in particular the Program 

has been successful in focusing more 

attention on sustainability and 

operation and maintenance issues. 

In Rwanda, the Program’s East and 

Southern Africa office contributed to an 

assessment mission for the re-integration 

of refugees, focusing on water supply 

and sanitation and urban services, and 

is now helping the Prefecture of Kigali 

to develop a sanitation investment 

program. The Program also worked in 

close collaboration with the government 

of Zimbabwe and IDA to prepare the 

Community Action Project. 

In Malawi and Mozambique, the 

Program, with the CSAs playing the 

lead role, has supported the preparation 

of CIDA-financed projects. The 

RWSS project in Malawi follows a 

programmatic approach to sector 

development and includes studies and 

workshops aimed at facilitating the 

retro-fitting of ongoing projects. 


The learning and communications 

agenda has focused on feeding 

emerging regional and global experiences 

into country-level strategies. 

Case studies are published and 

disseminated to share learning and 

experience regarding what practices 

work best to determine eligibility 

criteria, technical options, cost-sharing 

and cost-recovery arrangements. Also 

essential is the identification of policy 

and institutional reforms needed to 

address aspects such as community 

ownership of assets, legal status of 

community groups and funding 

mechanisms. 

Through regionally organized 

workshops, participants have shared 

practical lessons on thematic areas 

such as urban environmental sanitation, 

the demand-responsive approach, and 

issues of gender and participation. The 

East and Southern Africa office has 

also sponsored the participation of 

regional specialists at international 

meetings and conferences, including 

the Community Water Supply and 

Sanitation Conference held in 

Washington in May 1998. 

Study tours were organized for 

senior water, health and community 

development officials in Uganda and 

Kenya to promote systematic learning 

and feedback of lessons from policy, 

program design and implementation in 

Malawi. Participants had the 

opportunity to share views on policy 

and community-based issues with their 

counterparts in the other countries. In a 

similar study tour organized for 

Eritrean officials with the Malawi 

Social Action Fund, participants 

shared experience on issues such as 

community procurement. 

Senior Tanzanian water officials 

visited Ghana in December 1997 to 

study decentralization and empowerment 

of communities, promotion of active 

involvement by non-governmental 

organizations and the private sector, and 

implementation of demand-responsive 

approaches aimed at sustainability of 

services. They also discussed the issue of 

donor coordination. 

In Uganda, a capacity-building 

strategy formulated during a national 

workshop supported by the Program 

has helped key stakeholders working in 

water supply and sanitation projects, 

especially the Small Towns Water and 

Sanitation Project (STWSP), to 

implement community-based monitoring. 

The workshop also produced a user 

manual which has been disseminated to 

clients and partners in Uganda and 

elsewhere in the region who are 

involved in participatory monitoring, 

evaluation and capacity building at the 

community level. 


Greater implementation of the demandresponsive 

approach requires 

significant modification of existing 

institutional and policy frameworks in 

many countries in the region. 

Recognizing this, participants at the 

Demand-Responsive Approach 

Workshop held in Malawi in June 

1997 pointed out the need to plan this 

transition through the development of 

phased institutional reforms aimed at 

reorienting support agencies, capacity 

building, greater sharing of learning 

and experiences, and regular 

monitoring and evaluation. Participants 

also identified the need for 

modification of ongoing projects and 

programs to make them more demandresponsive, 

development and 

dissemination of common rules, and 

communication and awareness 

campaigns targeted at groups working 

at all levels. The Program must continue 

to complement its support for program 

design and implementation with 

workshops such as the one held in 

Malawi to increase consensus on the 

need for policy and institutional reform. 

Most peri-urban dwellers do not 

receive water and sanitation services 

directly from official utilities. They often 

rely on informal service providers. The 

emergence of small-scale independent 

providers of water and sanitation 

services is breaking long-standing 

monopolies and is filling an important 

niche, working in areas of great 

poverty not typically reached by large 

utilities. Finding ways to increase 

involvement by the small-scale private 

sector in the provision of water supply 

and sanitation services represents a 

major challenge for the Program, but 

one that provides enormous learning 

opportunities and possible solutions to 

many current problems, particularly in 

the area of urban environmental 

sanitation. The Program will 

contribute to a better understanding 

of issues through involvement in the 

WUP project on Strengthening 

Capacity of Water Utilities to provide 

Water and Sanitation Services in Lowincome 

Urban Areas, and the Study 

on Small Scale Private Sector 

Participation in Water and 

Environmental Sanitation Services for 

the Urban Poor. The Program must 

also maximize learning opportunities 

through dissemination of lessons 

emerging from ongoing projects such 

as the Kibera program. 

31

Overview 

The Program’s Andean office is 

active in the three poorest 

countries in South America - 

Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. 

Although these countries are 

considered lower-middle-income 

economies, per capita income 

figures obscure the extreme 

inequality of their income 

distribution. Bolivia, for example, 

has a GNP per capita of US$ 800, 

but more than 80% of its rural 

population lives below the 

poverty line (as do 75% and 65% 

of the rural populations in Peru 

and Ecuador respectively). The 

Andean region also has the highest 

concentration of indigenous 

peoples in the Americas, many of 

whom now find themselves in 

transition, migrating from rural 

areas to the cities. 

Although people living in the 

center of large towns usually 

have access to water supply and 

sanitation, this is not the case in 

rural and peri-urban areas. Only 

about a quarter of rural Bolivians 

and Peruvians and fewer than 

half of rural Ecuadorians have 

access to safe water. The figures 

for access to sanitation are even 

32 


LA PAZ, BOLIVIA 


BOLIVIA 

ECUADOR* 

PERU* 


Andean Region 

lower: less than twenty percent in 

Bolivia, thirty-four percent in 

Ecuador, and ten percent in Peru. 

Nevertheless, the general 

trend in Latin America towards 

decentralization of power and 

resources to local governments 

bodes well for demand-based 

programs seeking to increase 


coverage, and there are many 

examples of this trend in the 

Andean Region. Ecuador's 

Decentralization Law hands 

responsibility, decision-making 

power, and money for community 


programs over to the municipalities, 

and its Modernization Law, 

which seeks to establish national 

standards for water supply and 

sanitation infrastructure, is also a 

step forward. Peru's Popular 

Participation Law and Decentralization 

Law offer similar 

promise, but the success of all of 

these laws and initiatives will 

require substantial institutional 

support. To help realize this 

potential, the Program is 

providing technical assistance to 

governments to help formulate 

and implement policies and 

strategies for sustainable 

investments. 

Other challenges facing the 

sector are the continued use of 

outdated or inappropriate 

technologies and the lack of 


adequate hygiene education 

programs. In some cases, efforts 

to extend hygiene education 

have been thwarted by 

inattention to gender issues. To 

overcome this problem, studies 

have been undertaken to identify 

gender- and culture-specific 

hygiene behaviors and to 

address and incorporate these 

findings in new and continuing 

hygiene education programs. 

The concept of community 

participation is gradually 

changing in the Andean region 

as well. A recent study 

conducted by the Program 

revealed that in some cases, 

communities have developed 

waste disposal practices and 

sanitation systems that, 

although not ideal, work better 

than those left in place by 

previous NGO interventions. 

Clearly, there is a great deal to 

be learned from these 

communities. Nevertheless, rural 

health statistics in the region are 

grave: in Bolivia, 146 of every 

1,000 children die before the 

age of five (compared with 100 

of every 1,000 children in Peru) 

and in Ecuador, 42 of every 

1,000 children born die in 

infancy -- mostly due to 

preventable, hygiene-related 

diseases. Improvement of 

hygiene behavior in these rural 

areas is thus a top priority.

The El Alto Peri-Urban Pilot Project: Testing Models for Improved 

Service Provision to the Urban Poor 

When the private water and sanitation utility Aguas del Illimani was 

awarded a thirty-year contract to use and extend Bolivia’s existing 

infrastructure to sell water supply and sanitation services in La Paz 

and El Alto, the Program approached the new privatized concern 

with a proposal for a pilot project. El Alto, although a city in its own 

right, is historically the extension of La Paz's peri-urban areas and is 

typical in many ways of peri-urban areas in the region: the great 

majority of the population is indigenous and more conversant in its 

own native language (in this case, Aymara) than in Spanish, annual 

per capita incomes are low (around US$ 488), and water supply and 

sewerage coverage rates (86% and 42% respectively) are similar to 

those of poverty-ridden areas. 

The pilot project has given the Program the opportunity to test a 

model for offering improved service provision and hygiene education 

to the urban poor. This model includes non-conventional sewerage 

options and the establishment of micro-credit financing mechanisms. 

The pilot project has almost completed its preparation stage, and 

implementation will begin in the second half of 1998. Among the 

most important achievements thus far has been a collaborative 

planning process involving the El Alto Municipality, Aguas del 

Illimani, the Departmental Government of La Paz, the Ministry of 

Housing and Basic Services, the Vice Ministry of Public Investment 

and External Financing, the Water Regulatory Agency, Swedish 

International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), UNDP, the 

Andean Group and the residents of proposed intervention areas of El 

Alto. Despite a change in national government in August 1997, 

ongoing dialogue among all stakeholders and the transparency of 

the project have assured the project’s continuation and have helped 

secure the necessary financing. Stakeholders have also reached 

consensus on the project’s objectives, implementation framework, 

and the selection of target communities. 

33


Urban growth rates in the Andean 

Region are among the highest in the 

world. Massive migration to the cities is 

straining existing infrastructure in periurban 

areas and raises the already 

high risk of exposure to epidemics 

related to the contamination of water 

sources. In response to this challenge, 

the Program has undertaken a regional 

peri-urban initiative with two phases: 

studies which survey community 

members to better understand local 

conditions, and piloting and 

demonstration projects which test new 

models and participatory approaches. 

The Andean regional team is 

developing and conducting "participatory 

rapid urban assessments" (PRUA) in 

selected cities in Ecuador, Peru, and 

Bolivia, which bring the community into 

the research process to analyze water 

and sanitation conditions in their social 

context. In addition to analyzing 

conditions, these assessments look for 

ways to enhance co-operation between 

water utility companies and peri-urban 

communities. In collaboration with the 

German Agency for Technical Cooperation 

(GTZ), a survey has been 

done of more than twenty water and 

wastewater companies serving periurban 

areas in Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, 

and Colombia. The findings and 

conclusions of this survey are being 

documented in a final report, which 

also outlines a project to respond to 

problems identified in the survey. 

In El Alto, Bolivia, the Program is 

working with private water utility Aguas 

del Illimani on a pilot project to 

improve water supply and sanitation 

service to peri-urban areas through the 

use of low-cost technology, 

participatory mechanisms, and microcredit 

financing arrangements. Based 

on the experience from the El Alto pilot, 

other projects are being developed in 

the region as well, such as the IDBfunded 

Neighborhood Improvement 

Project. Through these two Bolivianbased 

projects, the Program is 

developing and testing various social 

intermediation methodologies -- which 

include community participation, 

34 

hygiene education, and institutional 

strengthening components -- for 

implementation in peri-urban areas. 

A study is being done of an 

association formed by eight small 

water co-operatives operating in the 

periphery of Santa Cruz, Bolivia. The 

Program is documenting its findings on 

the successes and failures experienced 

by this association to provide lessons 

for other groups considering similar 

opportunities for collaboration. 


Rapid decentralization in the Andean 

region has made capacity building 

and institutional strengthening at the 

local level more urgent than ever. 

Different institutional models have been 

tested and a variety of public-private 

partnerships for rural water supply and 

sanitation (RWSS) provision tried 

through projects such as the 

Strengthening and Amplification of 

Basic Health Services (FASBASE) 

program in Ecuador. 

The Program is also working to 

improve RWSS service through a 

regional capacity building and hygiene 

education initiative co-founded with 

UNICEF in 1997. The initiative is 

employing national consultants in Peru, 

Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, and 

Venezuela to assess the strengths and 

weaknesses of local capacity building 

efforts, and will present the findings at 

a series of national and regional-level 

workshops to develop consensus about 

what approaches are working and 

where new ones are needed. 

Technical assistance is being 

provided to projects and institutions 

working in the RWSS sector throughout 

the region. In Bolivia, the Program is 

carrying out monitoring and evaluation 

for the UNDP/World Bank-funded Rural 

Water and Sanitation Project 

(PROSABAR), and provides technical 

assistance to the General Director's 

Office of Water and Sanitation 

(DIGESBA), which oversees executive 

committees at the national level. 

In Peru, workshops on planning, 

appropriate technologies and project 

costs have been organized, as well as 


technical assistance for planning, 

monitoring and evaluation for two pilot 

projects: Water and Sanitation in the 

South Sierra (SANBASUR) and the 

Cajamarca Primary Attention and 

Sanitation (APRISABAC). The Program 

also provided water tank specialists to 

Peru's National Fund for Compensation 

and Social Development (FONCODES), 

enabling FONCODES to reduce its 

costs for water tanks by half. 

In Ecuador, training has been 

provided through the FASBASE program 

-- on subjects ranging from social 

intermediation to sustainability -- to local 

private organizations and professionals. 

Technical and planning assistance has 

also been provided to the PROAGUAS 

project to ensure that this new project 

incorporates the principles and lessons 

learned from FASBASE, the Yacupaj 

and PROSABAR project. 


The Program has developed and 

documented experience from a range 

of approaches for engaging 

communities in the planning and 

implementation of their own water 

supply and sanitation projects. In 

Ecuador, a manual was produced on 

best practices to use in Ecuador and 

other countries in the region. This 

manual, produced in collaboration with 

other sector institutions, describes 

successful methodologies, participatory 

techniques, and recommended 

educational materials applicable to all 

rural areas. 

In Bolivia, an anthropological study 

was done which found that women in 

many rural areas have taboos about 

defecating in the same places as men, 

explaining why women were less likely 

to use latrines in certain rural 

communities. The study also resulted in 

other findings about gender- and 

culture-specific hygiene behaviors 

which must be considered and 

addressed for hygiene education 

programs to be successful. A rural 

hygiene education pilot project is being 

planned for the region that will engage 

community members as co-researchers 

in the spirit of the original study. The

pilot project puts into practice our 

belief that communities are capable of 

gathering data, analyzing it and 

generating new knowledge. 

The Program is also sponsoring 

Bolivia's Neighborhood Impro v e m e n t 

Demonstration Project, which is 

identifying women leaders and working 

with them to develop a part i c i p a t o ry 

gender assessment that supports and 

expands their roles. In Ecuador's 

FASBASE program, project implementers 

have been successful in the inclusion of 

women in some local water committees, 

and women have also played a role in 

community planning. Still, greater eff o rt s 

a re needed to encourage and foster the 

acceptance of a stronger role for women 

in project planning and implementation, 

as elevating the role of women has 

c reated conflict in some communities. 



Program activities focus on strengthening 

the sector's national and local 

capacity for investments and sustainable 

water and sanitation programs. To w a rd 

this end, a study was conducted of the 

costs of sample rural water supply 

and sanitation projects in Bolivia, 

P e ru and Ecuador to find out how 

much diff e rent programs and 

countries were spending on their 

p rojects, why, and ways that costs 

might be reduced without sacrificing 

q u a l i t y. The study's findings were 

p resented at workshops in all thre e 

countries, and have since been used 

to make policy decisions and determ i n e 

p roject implementation pro c e d u res. 

The Pro g r a m ’s office in Lima worked 

closely with Peru's Vice Ministry for 

I n f r a s t ru c t u re on an ‘Outline for a 

Sustainable National Rural Water and 

Sanitation Program.’ This outline serv e d 

as the basis for a national workshop 

w h e re government officials and sector 

p rofessionals discussed ways to 

enhance sustainability of water supply 

and sanitation projects. Participants also 

resolved to launch a pilot project to test 

the soundness of and make adjustments 

to the demand-responsive approach for 

application in Peru . 

In Bolivia, the Program is 

supporting the strengthening of sector 

policies and strategies in peri-urban 

areas through the El Alto pilot project 

and the Neighborhood Improvement 

Project. In rural areas, the Program is 

helping build infrastructure, training 

local executing agencies, and 

strengthening institutions through the 

IDB-funded National Rural Water and 

Sanitation Project (PROAGUAS). 

Working closely with Bolivia’s Ministry 

of Housing and Basic Services, a 

decentralized approach was developed 

in which 25% of operating costs come 

from the community and 10% come 

through funds decentralized to the 

municipality. Similarly, in Ecuador, the 

Program has supported an informal 

group composed of members of the 

State Bank, the Social Investment Fund 

and various government institutions to 

establish agreements for the 

s t rengthening of institutions and 

definition of a financial policy for 

E c u a d o r ’s PRAGUAS program, for 

which project financing arr a n g e m e n t s 

will be based on the ability of 

municipalities to collect, borrow and 

manage funds. 

Networking and workshops have 

played an important supporting role in 

all of these projects. In 1997 and the 

first half of 1998, over thirty workshops 

were held in the region, bringing 

together government officials and 

members of sector organizations and 

external support agencies to build 

consensus on ways to improve and 

extend water supply and sanitation 

service throughout the region. 


Investments 

In Ecuador and Bolivia, the Program has 

s u p p o rted rural water supply and 

sanitation pilot projects such as FA S B A S E 

and PROSABAR and is monitoring and 

evaluating the projects in specific 

communities to collect and document 

experiences regarding gender, community 

participation, training, and the 

e ffectiveness of diff e rent municipal models. 

L a rge investments in Peru ’s water supply 

and sanitation sector have been 

35

Selected Activities for the Andean 

Region 

• Regional Peri-Urban Initiative: 

includes the Participatory Rapid Urban 

Assessment (PRUA) and case studies, 

piloting, and the development of 

participatory mechanisms involving the 

urban poor (El Alto peri-urban pilot 

project, the IDB-supported Neighborhood 

Improvement Project, and the Santa Cruz 

Co-operative Initiative). 

• Municipal Management Models in 

RWSS: includes piloting and testing of 

different models for managing services 

(FASBASE), regional capacity building, 

and institutionalization of municipal 

training (Andean Group/ UNICEF 

capacity building initiative). 

• Support to Large-Scale Sustainable 

Investments: includes monitoring and 

evaluation (PROSABAR), technical 

assistance (FASBASE), and policy 

formulation (PROAGUAS, PRAGUAS, 

Peruvian National Rural Water and 

Sanitation Project). 

• Attention to Local Culture and 

Gender: includes innovative piloting and 

studies that engage community residents 

as co-researchers capable of collecting 

and analyzing data and generating new 

knowledge. 

• Emphasis on Learning and 

Communications: includes facilitation of 

more rapid two-way communications 

through the use of electronic media and 

integration of communications into 

project and study planning so that 

communications goals figure in 

project/study conception. 

36 

hampered by the lack of an adequate 

institutional framework capable of 

supporting project execution and 

sustainability. To fight this problem, the 

Program supports initiatives led by the 

Peruvian government and international 

development organizations, such as the 

World Bank-sponsored Country 

Assistance Strategy 2000, which is 

working to extend rural water supply and 

sanitation coverage throughout Peru. 

A comprehensive manual has been 

published using Program-supported 

projects as examples of how to 

implement sustainable projects in rural 

areas. This document will be 

disseminated to non-governmental 

organizations, executing agencies, and 

sector institutions throughout the region. 


Over the last 18 months, the Program 

has published a wide range of reports, 

working papers, manuals and case 

studies documenting programs and 

sector developments throughout the 

Andean region. At the same time, the 

Program has been moving from 

published materials alone to the 

combined and complementary use of 

other media, such as the Internet, to 

speed up the process of communicating 

this valuable information, to lower costs 

and to enhance feedback from others 

working in the sector. 

Among the Program’s new learning 

strategies has been the development of 

a participatory methodology for 

working with peri-urban communities. 

This methodology, the Participatory 

Rapid Urban Assessment (PRUA), 

provides researchers with a ‘content 

menu’ and a procedure for engaging 

stakeholders in the process of 

discovering together how water supply 

and sanitation infrastructure functions in 

its social context. Other innovative 

learning strategies include the "Rapid 

Participatory Appraisal of Rural Water 

and Sanitation Services", which gives 

small municipalities in Ecuador a tool 

for assessing water supply and 

sanitation services in the communities in 

their jurisdiction and for short- and longterm 

planning of investments. 



In addition to providing municipalities 

in the region with models and 

institutional strengthening, the Program 

must continue to help them develop their 

networking potential so that municipal 

leaders in Peru have the chance to 

share experiences and lessons with their 

counterparts in Bolivia, Ecuador, 

Colombia, and Venezuela. Although 

improved communications will play a 

key role in this endeavor, there is also a 

need for greater sharing through 

national and regional-level conferences 

and workshops. 

The Program’s Andean team will 

continue its work to improve water 

supply and sanitation service in periurban 

areas, to support the World 

Bank and the Inter-American 

Development Bank in large-scale 

projects, and to look for ways to 

improve local capacity building and 

support the decentralization process. 

Efforts are also needed to enhance the 

sophistication and sensitivity to cultural 

and gender issues of executing 

agencies so that they can devise and 

implement strategies and programs 

which respond to the needs and 

expressed demand of the communities 

in which they work.


The headquarters office for the 

Program is located at the World 

Bank in Washington, DC. The 

Program moved to the Finance 

and Private Sector vice-presidency 

of the World Bank in 1997 but 

remains in the Infrastructure 

Department. The small headquarters 

team focuses on global 

sector issues affecting the entire 

Program. Lessons from Program 

experience in all the regions are 

synthesized and shared globally 

in print, video and electronic 

formats. Headquarters staff also 

coordinate and carry out a number 

of management and leadership 

functions for the Program. 

In 1997, the headquarters 

team held its first retreat since 

1993. The objectives of the 

retreat were to assess and refine 

the elements of the Program’s 

vision and to identify key actions, 

roles and responsibilities 

necessary for the headquarters 

team to implement this vision and 

build the capacity to work 

together as a team. 

Strategic Planning and 

Work Plan Development 

The headquarters team provides 

management support to the regional 

Headquarters 

Washington, DC 

teams, guides the substantive agenda 

and provides a framework for 

workplan development. Headquarters 

staff ensure that Program workplans are 

developed in full consultation with our 

counterparts in host governments as 

well as with other key sector actors, 

including non-governmental 

organizations, external support agencies 

and other partners. This participatory 

process was undertaken explicitly for the 

1998 workplan, a review process that 

culminated in the meeting of the Program 

Advisory Committee (PAC) in November 

1997. The PAC includes representatives 

from all of the Program's donors and 

representatives from developing 

countries, UNICEF, and WHO. 

Management and Administration 

Headquarters provides overall 

management and administration for the 

global Program. This enables the 

Program to achieve economies of scale 

in many areas. For example, fundraising 

and monitoring of workplans and 

budgets are more efficient at the central 

level, leaving regional teams more time 

for substantive work. The Washington 

office also plays a key role in recruiting 

senior staff for headquarters and 

regional offices, and helps prepare and 

implement individual professional 

development plans. During 1997-1998 

many steps were taken to decentralize 

financial management to the 

Program's regional offices in order to 

improve tracking and management of 

resources and outputs, make financial 

management activities more 

transparent, and strengthen fiscal 

accountability to donors. 

The location of the Program headquarters 

in the World Bank provides 

staff with direct access to the operations 

of the sector's largest external investor, 

and enables staff to contribute their 

knowledge and experience to the 

design and supervision of water supply 

and sanitation projects financed by 

the Bank. 

The headquarters team supports the 

regional offices through overall 

guidance, technical assistance, and aid 

in building field capacity and networks 

in rural water supply and sanitation 

and urban environmental sanitation. 

Assistance is also provided for crosscutting 

components such as gender, 

participation, and implementation of 

the demand-responsive approach. 

Headquarters staff offer perspective 

and expertise that are grounded in 

global experiences. This support 

includes consultations about substantive 

issues and projects, participation in 

workshops and regional and country 

consultations, review of proposals, 

terms of reference, and communications 

including print, on-line and video. 

External Relations and 

Partnership Building 

The Washington office serves as the 

focal point for building and 

maintaining the Program's strategic 

partnerships at the global level. 

Headquarters staff maintain strong 

37

38 

UNDP - WORLD BANK WATER AND SANITATION PROGRAM


working relationships with all the 

Program's donors, and represent the 

Program in global forums such as the 


Collaborative Council and the Global 

Water Partnership. Significant time and 

effort are dedicated to building and 

strengthening global partnerships and 

enhancing cooperation with donors. 

Communications 

Headquarters is a focal point for 

sharing lessons and experience among 

partners in all regions. The Program 

communications strategy incorporates 

multiple media to reach target audiences 

with the most effective and appropriate 

information. The strategy focuses on 

linking information, publishing and 

networking activities and provides a 

framework for global communications 

efforts and a context for regional and 

country level strategies. 

Over the last 18 months, headquarters 

has published numerous case 

studies, working papers, and reports. 

The Washington office also 

produced three videotapes: 

1. an overview of the Program 

2. an introduction to the demandresponsive 

approach (Community Voice 

- Community Choice) 

3. Healthy Communities on the Participatory 

Hygiene Sanitation and 

Transformation (PHAST) method. 

Both Community Voice - Community 

Choice and Healthy Communities were 

shown at the Community Water 

Supply and Sanitation Conference in 

May 1998. 

A number of publications and a 

wealth of other Program information is 

posted on the program's website. 

Launched in September 1997, the 

website (www.wsp.org) has had an 

enormous impact on our capacity to 

provide information on Program and 

other sector-related activities, to 

disseminate case studies, working 

papers and other documents, and to 

foster greater two-way communication 

between the Program and its partners. 

The website layers and links 

information and communications so 

that it is tiered, targeted and 

responsive to audience needs ondemand. 

This enables us to break 

through the information overload of 

some of our target audience and 

improve access for others. The 

website has also enhanced 

networking possibilities for sector 

professionals from around the world. 

For example, the portion of the 

website dedicated to the recent 


Sanitation Conference provides contact 

information for those who attended the 

conference and has a dialogue space 

where participants and other interested 

parties can read and reply to 

messages on issues raised at the 

conference. The website is updated 

weekly and is organized so that users 

can select a range of information 

about Program themes and activities. It 

also provides useful links to our 

partners and to other sites with relevant 

sector materials. 

Global Study 

Global Learning 

In collaboration with the regional teams, 

headquarters staff analyze Program 

learning and package it for distribution 

to an international audience. The 

Program advocates a demand-based 

approach to water supply and sanitation 

delivery. This approach requires a new 

way of thinking about project design 

and incentives for a wide range of 

stakeholder groups -- communities, nongovernmental 

organizations and other 

sector agencies, private sector, and 

government. The Program's learning 

agenda focuses on this complexity. One 

focus of global learning in 1997-98 was 

a six-country, global rural water supply 

and sanitation study which clarified 

what is meant by demandresponsiveness 

in theory and in practice 

and measured and quantified the impact 

of demand-responsiveness on the 

sustainability of rural water systems. 

(See box below) 

The Rural Water Supply Global Study, was carried out to clarify 

what is meant by demand-responsiveness in theory and in practice, 

and to measure and quantify the impact of demand-responsiveness 

on the sustainability of rural water systems. 

This global study was carried out over a one-year period by 

field-based teams in six countries: Benin, Bolivia, Honduras, 

Indonesia, Pakistan, and Uganda. Each field team was composed of 

local researchers - from nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and 

universities - using a common methodology. In all, the study team 

members surveyed 1,875 households, representing 125 communities 

served by 10 projects. 

The study's major findings were: 

• Demand-responsiveness increases sustainability. 

• Household demand should guide investment decisions. 

• Training, community organization, construction quality, and 

technology also contribute to sustainability. 

• A demand-responsive approach requires appropriate financial 

policies and accountability to community members. 

These findings have been found to have a number of implications 

for projects: 

• Adopting a demand-responsive approach will improve the 

sustainability of water systems. 

• Better focus on implementation of rules by project staff, 

intermediaries, contractors, or NGOs will improve performance. 

• Investing in household and water committee training pays off in 

terms of sustainability. 

• Adopting flexible design standards will prevent ad-hoc 

modifications that jeopardize water system integrity. 

39

Findings from this study were part of 

the impetus for the Community Water 

Supply and Sanitation Conference held 

in Washington in May 1998. Global 

learning has also focused on the link 

between demand-responsiveness and 

the sustainability of urban environmental 

sanitation programs. 

The headquarters team helps to 

share Program learning on a global 

scale by feeding Program information 

into the World Bank knowledge 

management system, a source for 

relevant knowledge that can help 

Program staff in all offices do their jobs 

more effectively and efficiently. 


The Community Water Supply and 

Sanitation Conference was held in May 

1998 (see box page 7) and focused on 

demand-responsive approaches to rural 

water supply and sanitation provision 

and the implications for management 

and sustainability of services. A series 

of presentations provided a framework 

for understanding the demandresponsive 

approach and case studies 

illustrated the approach in a wide 

range of regional and institutional 

contexts. For example, one study 

looked at lessons from the Sri Lanka 


Sanitation Project, a large-scale World 

Bank-supported project that has 

attempted to establish project rules and 

procedures that respond to community 

demand for improved services. This 

project adopted a flexible implementation 

strategy by creating a learning 

culture within the project and by making 

adjustments to project rules and 

procedures as lessons emerged. 


The Program continued to strengthen its 

focus on urban water supply and 

environmental sanitation, and is 

focusing on expansion into peri-urban 

areas in particular. The first global 

meeting of the Program's urban 

environmental sanitation (UES) team 

was held in December 1997 and 

brought regional UES specialists 

together with their colleagues working 

40 

at the World Bank to define global 

objectives for the team for the next 

two years, to share and review 

experiences and to foster team 

building among participants. 

A recent publication documents the 

development of a strategic sanitation 

approach and the common elements of 

successful urban environmental 

sanitation programs. These elements 

include attention to user preferences 

and willingness to pay, unbundling 

services into discrete parts, and 

involving the creative use of both nonformal 

and formal institutions. 

As it becomes increasingly clear that 

the public sector alone cannot meet the 

increasing demand for water and 

sanitation services among growing 

urban populations, interest has turned to 

the private sector, whose participation 

in operation and management of 

formerly public utilities is taking various 

forms. The Program believes that smallscale 

providers have great potential for 

improving service delivery to lowincome 

urban populations at a 

comparatively low investment cost, but 

a great deal more must be learned 

before such independent providers 

can be incorporated as beneficiaries 

of regular programs. The Program is 

joining with its partners at the World 

Bank, IFC, bilateral agencies and 

representatives of private sector 

operators to explore possibilities for 

enhancing the role and capacity of 

independent providers through a 

series of studies, pilot projects and 

networking aimed at providing 

technical assistance, access to credit 

and other enabling conditions. 


The Program continues to build on the 

achievements of the Promotion of the 

Role of Women in Water and 

Environmental Sanitation Services 

(PROWWESS) project, which advocated 

and developed techniques to facilitate 

greater community participation 

(particularly among women). 

Building on these experiences, work 

has begun, in collaboration with a 

number of partners, on the first phase of 


a five-year Participatory Learning and 

Action Initiative to improve the capacity 

of sector agencies to respond to user 

demands for water supply and 

sanitation services using gendersensitive, 

participatory approaches.


Staff

The Program has a diversified 

base of financial support that suits 

its decentralized structure and 

wide range of national, regional 

and global activities. The United 

Nations Development Program 

(UNDP) and the World Bank are 

the Program’s two founding 

partners. In addition to their 

continued support, 16 bilateral 

donors have provided financial 

assistance to the Program during 

the past five years. 

Following a 1996 financial crisis 

and refinancing plan, the period from 

January 1997 through June 1998 was 

a time of careful rebuilding and 

strategic expansion. Most core global 

and regional funding foreseen in 1996 

was realized, and the Program was 

largely refinanced through 1999. 

Major core contributors included 

Belgium, Canada, Denmark, 

Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, 

Sweden, Switzerland and UNDP’s 

Sustainable Energy and Environment 

Department and the Regional Bureau 

for Africa. Many of these funds are 

earmarked for particular regions and 

for thematic areas. This support has 

enabled the planning and development 

of new country programs, financed by 

core contributors as well as by other 

bilateral agencies. 

Not all contributions expected in 

1996 were approved, however. This 

42 

Chapter 3 


required reconfiguring some activities, 

in particular in East Asia and the 

Pacific, which experienced a 

significant shortfall in core funding. 

The shortfall was managed in 1997 

and 1998 through cost reductions, 

reallocation of some funds (with 

donor consent), and generation of 

additional funds, with the result that 

Australia will become a significant 

financial partner in East Asia 

beginning in FY99. At the global 

level, reductions in UNDP support 

have been managed in part by the 

revenue generated by 5% global 

program management fee agreed by 

the Program’s major funders in June 

1996. This fee, which was initially 

applied only to core contributions is 

gradually being extended to all funds 

managed by the Program. 

As shown in the table, 

disbursements increased to more than 

$10 million during 1997 and are 

likely to exceed $12 million in 1998. 

The increased disbursements in 1997 

and 1998 restored the Program to the 

size it was in 1994 and 1995. Given 

the number of new projects approved 

over the past 18 months, the Program 

expects to slow growth and to shift the 

focus to delivery. One other trend that 

is expected to continue is the shift in 

overall funding from UNDP in the early 

1990s to bilateral agencies at present. 

During 1997, the Program set out 

to establish a financial management 

information system (FMIS) that would 

permit task-based planning, costing, 


and monitoring, as well as provide the 

tools to decentralize budget authority 

and accountability to the regional 

offices. The FMIS was planned to 

operate within Bank financial systems. 

In early 1998 the World Bank 

committed itself to replacing its major 

business systems with the SAP (a 

comprehensive business software 

package used by many global 

corporations) by mid-1999. The SAP 

will include an activity-based costing 

facility, and the Program’s efforts to 

create a similar facility were 

suspended. Many other improvements 

needed to decentralize responsibility 

for funds management have been 

implemented. Regional office 

administrative staff have been trained 

and are performing many budget 

tasks previously done from 

Washington. 

In 1998, Program staff began 

preparing a comprehensive financing 

plan for refunding the Program for the 

years 2000 and beyond. Many 

bilateral donors are directing funds to 

the country level, and one result is less 

money for global and sector activities. 

Given this trend and the Program’s 

experience over the last several years, 

a different strategy will be needed to 

fund the Program in the future. 

Country-level projects and activities 

will need to cover their proportionate 

share of regional and global Program 

management costs and increasingly 

scarce sector funds (global and 

regional) will be targeted to global

CHAPTER 3: PROGRAM FINANCING 

and regional activities. Program 

management is also considering: 

• the establishment of a fund that can 

be targeted to correct short-term 

imbalances; 

• moving towards packages of 

services and deliverables 

around issues rather than regions; 

• expanding sources of support to 

identify other funding partners; 

charging staff out to various sources 

of funds at a uniform charging rate, 

that would ensure that all Program 

overhead costs are covered. 

Donor Contributions: 1992 through 1997 

Bilateral Agencies 

Australia 

Belgium 

Canada 

Denmark 

Finland 

France 

Germany 

Ireland 

Italy 

Japan 

Luxembourg 

The Netherlands 

Norway 

Sweden 

Switzerland 

United Kingdom 

Subtotal, Bilateral 

UNDP 

Global/Interregional 

Regional Africa 

Regional Asia 

Other Regional 

Country projects 

Subtotal UNDP 

World Bank 

Grand Total 

1992 

11 

- 

92 

326 

- 

- 

66 

- 

- 

- 

- 

2,062 

1,348 

- 

953 

193 

5,051 

4,670 

402 

328 

445 

3,205 

9,050 

1,061 

15,162 

1993 

2 

- 

931 

686 

111 

- 

- 

- 

- 

343 

122 

1,519 

1,474 

202 

904 

180 

6,474 

1,298 

1,024 

641 

150 

2,033 

5,146 

1,425 

13,045 

Total Program Expenditures: 1993 - 1998 

16,000 

12,000 

8,000 

4,000 

1994 

30 

- 

29 

393 

134 

35 

- 

87 

42 

1,111 

267 

653 

972 

329 

1,175 

- 

5,257 

1,058 

916 

1,319 

79 

1,985 

5,357 

1,356 

11,970 

0 

1995 

11 

- 

- 

399 

- 

80 

44 

26 

231 

1,402 

235 

302 

1,554 

880 

1,107 

151 

6,422 

1,279 

561 

723 

52 

1,123 

3,738 

947 

11,107 

13,045 

1996 

- 

- 

- 

373 

- 

- 

- 

- 

89 

132 

168 

500 

1,441 

1,196 

1,054 

60 

5,013 

1,206 

128 

180 

- 

389 

1,903 

848 

7,764 

11,970 

1997 

- 

312 

95 

1,397 

- 

- 

- 

- 

- 

- 

88 

1,271 

1,228 

1,041 

2,143 

- 

7,577 

503 

253 

707 

- 

633 

2,096 

642 

10,314 

11,107 

6 year 

total 

54 

312 

1,147 

3,574 

245 

115 

110 

113 

362 

2,988 

880 

6,307 

8,017 

3,648 

7,336 

584 

35,794 

10,014 

3,284 

3,898 

726 

9,368 

27,290 

6,279 

69,362 

7,764 

% of 

total 

0% 

0% 

2% 

5% 

0% 

0% 

0% 

0% 

1% 

4% 

1% 

9% 

12% 

5% 

11% 

1% 

52% 

14% 

5% 

6% 

1% 

14% 

39% 

9% 

100% 

US$000 per calendar year 

10,314 

1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 

Jan 1,1998 

to June 

30, 1998 

52 

299 

133 

764 

- 

- 

- 

- 

- 

36 

266 

248 

629 

492 

860 

- 

3,779 

409 

391 

600 

- 

148 

1,548 

999 

6,326 

12,600 

1998 

(estimate) 

1997 and 

1st 6 mos. 

of 1998 

52 

611 

228 

2,161 

- 

- 

- 

- 

- 

36 

354 

1,520 

1,857 

1,533 

3,003 

- 

11,356 

911 

644 

1,308 

- 

781 

3,644 

1,641 

16,641 

43

South Asia 

Cross, Piers - Regional Manager 

Bannerji, Shantana - Team Assistant 

Chitkara, Poonam - Team Assistant 

Dayal, Rekha - Social Development Specialist 

Divyadass, John - Driver 

D'Souza, Anita - Team Assistant 

Evans, Barbara E. - Urban Specialist 

Iyer, Parameswaran - Country Team Leader (India) 

Minnatullah, K.M. - Senior Program Officer 

Nakao, Masakazu - Urban Specialist 

Paul, Harminder - Team Assistant 

Pendley, Charles J. - Sector Planner 

Prakash, John - Team Assistant 

Raman, S.V. - Administrative Officer 

Ravichandran, M. - Administrative Assistant 

Samantaray, Ranjan - UN Inter-Agency Coordinator (India) 

Sengupta, A. K. - Country Officer (India) 

Sharma, Sudhirendar - Communications Officer 

Upadhyay, Rajesh K. - Messenger 

Bangladesh 

Ashan, Tanveer - Urban Specialist 

Akhtaruzzaman, Md. - Project Coordinator & Training 

Specialist (ITN) 

Areng, Enak - Messenger 

Chowdhury, Dilara - Team Assistant 

Haider, Iftekher - Country Officer 

Jehan, Hasin - Technology Specialist (ITN) 

Kabir, Babar, N - Country Team Leader (Bangladesh) 

Mohsin, Mohammad - Community Development Specialist 

(ITN) 

Rashid, Haroon Ur - Country Officer 

Shahjahan, Md. - Driver 

Shamsuddin, Abu Jafar - Rural Specialist 

Pakistan 

Arshad, Raja Rehan - Country Team Leader (Pakistan) 

Akbar, Mohammad - Assistant Process Monitoring Field 

Officer 

Ansar, Farrukh - Administrative Assistant 

Asad, Rahat - Team Assistant 

Azfar, Sara Fatima - Urban Environmental Sanitation 

Specialist 

Javaya, Allah - Country Officer 

Mehreen Hosain - Community Development Specialist 

Samina, Tayyaba - Process Monitoring Field Officer 


Silverman, Jerry - Regional Manager 

Ali, Muhammad - Driver/Messenger 

Arifin, Sasya - Administrative Assistant 

Herlina, P. Dewi - Secretary 

44 

Staff * 

Josodipoero, Ratna Indrawati - Hygiene Educator 

Lambertus, Alfred - Rural Water Supply & Sanitation 

Specialist 

Mamuaya, Jenny - Budget/Personnel Assistant 

Mukherjee, Nilanjana - Regional Community 

Development/Hygiene Education Specialist 

Mutter, Clara - Secretary 

Pollard, Richard - Country Program Manager/Indonesia; 

Regional Sanitation & Rural Water Adviser 

Priyono, Pengky - Administrative Assistant 

Santoso, Metty - Regional Office Manager 

Suwanto - Driver/Messenger 

Tuli, Priya - Regional Communications Specialist 

China 

Wee, Ai-Chin - Country Program Manager/China & 

Mongolia 

Li, Wang - Operations Officer 

Ma, Xiao Hua - Secretary 

Lao PDR 

Seager, Michael - Country Program Manager/Lao PDR and 

Cambodia 

Arvling, Johan - Junior Professional Officer 

Lahiri, Santanu - Rural Water Supply & Sanitation Specialist 

Khamvilai, Phommahaxai - Administrative Assistant 

Khounkham, Kattignavong - Driver/General Assistant 

Mongolia 

Skoda, John D. - Project Management & Policy Advisor 

Odonchimeg, Davaasuren - National Project Coordinator 

Batjargal, Tsog - Project Administration & Program Assistant 

Norolkhoosuren, Munkhuu - Secretary & Translator 

Tsogtgerel, Alatangerel - Driver 

Philippines 

Jacob, Karen J.H. - Country Program Manager/Philippines; 

Regional Community Development Specialist 

Andrews, Charles - Regional Urban Environmental 

Sanitation Specialist 

Salle-Sison, Thelma - Administrative Assistant 

Vietnam 

Thanh, Nguyen - Country Program Manager/Vietnam; 

Urban Environmental Sanitation Specialist 

Hoang, Thi Hoa - Health and Hygiene Promotion Specialist 

Dang Duc Cuong - Rural Water and Sanitation Specialist 


Woldu, Mathewos - Regional Manager 

Akari, Peter - Community Water and Sanitation Specialist 

Angbo, Lucien - Water Utility and Private Sector Specialist 

Cole, Eric - Urban Environmental Specialist 

Debomy, Sylvie - Urban Environmental Specialist 

Diaby, Massandé - Team Assistant 

Dione, Ousmane - Junior Water Resources Management 

Specialist 

Gambo, Abdoulaye - Driver 

Katélé-N'Cho, Héléne - Team Assistant 

Ligan, Evelyne - Team Assistant 

Manou-Savina, Annie - Community Development Specialist 

N'Gatoueu, Peula Etienne - Clerk 

Reiff, Suzanne - Junior Program Officer 


Sanogo, Bakary - Communications Specialist 

Siby, Anne-Marie - Administrative Assistant 


Doyen, Jean - Regional Manager 

Brown, Ato - Environmental Sanitation Specialist 

Chikusa, Chimwemwe - Country Sector Advisor 

Gicheru, Njeri - Information and Communication Assistant 

Gichuri, Wambui - Country Sector Advisor 

Kiambi, Sarah - Secretary 

Kihara, Keziah - Administrative Secretary 

Kimiti, John - Driver 

Klop, Piet - Community Water Resource Management 

Specialist 

Lium, Tore - Water Sector Planner 

Makokha, Andrew - Water and Sanitation Sector Planner 

Monteiro, Paulo - Country Sector Advisor 

Mulama, Rose (Lidonde) - Community Development 

Specialist 

Muluneh, Belete - Country Sector Advisor 

Musumba, Brazille - Communications Officer 

Mwangi, Terry - Filing Clerk 

Mwiraria, Mukami (Kariuki) - Urban Development Specialist 

Wachuga, Jane - Senior Messenger 

Thande, Nyambura - Financial Management Assistant 

Uwizeye-Mapendano, Aimable - Country Sector Advisor 

Andean Region 

Mathys, Alain - Regional Manager 

Aristizabal, Gladys - Community Development Specialist 

Caceres, Humberto - Consultant 

Camacho, Alvaro - Consultant 

Maguina, Kenny - Driver/Messenger 

Orgaz, Remy - Communications Specialist 

Paiva, Tatiana - Administrative Assistant 

Siles, Sandra - Bilingual Executive Secretary 

Ecuador 

Encalada, Marcelo - Sanitary Engineer 

Peru 

Vera, Rafael - Country Manager 

Headquarters 

Grover, Brian - Program Manager 

Boydell, Robert - Senior Water & Sanitation Engineer 

Cardosi, Jason - Team Assistant 

Dhokai, Mari- Senior Staff Assistant 

Gibbons, Gayle - Communications Specialist 

Gross, Bruce - Deputy Manager 

Kim, Hywon Cha - Communications Associate 

Ryman, Nilse - Operations Assistant 

Solo, Tova - Urban Sanitation Specialist 

Tran, Kim - Budget Analyst 

Voneiff, John - Program Assistant 

* Program staff as of June 1998.

UNDP - World Bank Water and Sanitation Program Report - WSP

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